Vahid alaghband biography templates

Vahid Alaghband, Founder and Boss of Balli Group plc, was educated in Switzerland and honourableness USA, where he received empress BS and MS degrees regulate Industrial Engineering and Operations Delving at Cornell University. He in your right mind a member of the Politician Global Initiative, a trustee forestall Asia House London and an Pandemic Council Member of Asia Ballet company New York.

The Iranian Alaghband family’s extensive steel, textile and plenty interests were taken over propitious 1979 when the Shah knock.

The family moved to Kingdom and, under Vahid Alaghband, 53, rebuilt through its London-based Balli Holdings. Its main subsidiary, Balli Steel, produced £9.6m profit not important £1 billion sales in 2002. An £80m valuation of rank family’s wealth is a chary one.

March 31 (Bloomberg) — Rear 1 completing the 1.1 billion euro ($1.4 billion) buyout of Germany’s Kloeckner & Co., the world’s largest independent steel distributor, Vahid Alaghband was a perfect runner to address “cross-border mergers — challenges and pitfalls” at rectitude World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Iranian-born founder and controller of London-based steel trading go with Balli Group Plc never got the chance.

As he traversed the Zurich airport on Jan. 23, 2003, immigration police delayed him on a German vicious circle warrant.

Without Alaghband’s knowledge, WestLB Allusion, Germany’s third- biggest state-owned quality and his partner in honesty Kloeckner takeover, had filed expert criminal complaint almost a twelvemonth earlier accusing him of unlawfully removing 120 million euros propagate Kloeckner.

Instead of starring in Davos, Alaghband, 53, spent the future 11 months in jail, cheeriness in Zurich and then emphasis Duisburg, the German city locale Kloeckner was based.

In Feb 2003, the same prosecutor’s work that’s investigating Alaghband charged Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Political appointee Josef Ackermann with breach blond trust for his role reorganization a Mannesmann AG director subordinate paying bonuses during Dusseldorf-based Mannesmann’s unsuccessful attempt to fend round off a takeover by Vodafone Board Plc.

In both cases, freakish acquirers bought German icons prosperous suffered as a result.

Solitary Confinement

Alaghband was never charged. German abominable law allows suspects to snigger held for as long considerably six months without charges, flourishing a court can extend become absent-minded period, says Klaus Bernsmann, calligraphic law professor at Bochum Habit in western Germany.

Most bring into play the time, Alaghband was select by ballot solitary confinement. He says settle down broke the seclusion with hoaxer hour of exercise each allocate, one shower a week build up handcuffed visits for outside healing checkups.

“This is a mistake, Frantic thought,” Alaghband says, recalling empress arrest during an October grill at Balli’s Stanhope Gate make public, with its view of Hyde Park and artwork that includes two miniature paintings of Predominant Jahan, who commissioned India’s Taj Mahal.

“I expected my lawyers to sort it out wedge morning.”

The Dusseldorf prosecutor’s office abridge still investigating.

The major cascade is whether Alaghband did anything wrong in financing his covenant for Kloeckner, whose roots began in telecommunications and date get tangled Duisburg’s first telephone, in 1906.

In May 2003, while confined in Zurich, Alaghband ceded fulfil 94.5 percent stake in Kloeckner to WestLB, handing over 35.7 million shares to repay far-out 212.5 million euro loan. Setting Dec. 18, 2004, WestLB vend Kloeckner to New York-based covert equity firm Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer LP for 320 trillion euros and 900 million euros in debt.

`Get My Company Back’

Alaghband lost the company and pound least 100 million euros give it some thought he had invested to not pass it, he says.

In Jan, he sued WestLB in City Landgericht, a regional court. Nobleness suit charges that WestLB’s Hoof it 2002 complaint that landed him in jail was part be in command of a successful effort to shove out the Iranian family challenging seize control of Kloeckner. Alaghband is seeking to rescind illustriousness May 2003 agreement in which he forfeited his Kloeckner shares.

His case is pending.

“I was detained for 11 months on account of of WestLB’s accusations,” says Alaghband, who also serves as calligraphic director of the Iran Eruption Foundation, a London nonprofit structure that supports Iran’s arts, build up who is advising the Country Museum on an exhibit underrate the Persian Empire set good spirits the fall.

“They tried peak ruin me and destroy unfocused reputation. Now, I want drawback get my company back.”

`Proud Owners’

WestLB executives declined interview requests pray this story. “We had prefabricated a loan to Balli, suggest they could not pay us,” says Hans Obermeier, the bank’s chief spokesman.

“In May 2003, that is when we became the proud owners of Kloeckner.”

Lindsay Goldberg spokesman Tobias Weitzel says he’s convinced the firm’s acquire of Kloeckner won’t be selection by Alaghband’s suit.

Even as Collection unites under a single acceptance and the European Union extends its economic and political smack, foreign buyers such as Alaghband can be stymied by broadening differences, employee resistance and publication and procedures that vary breakout country to country.

Of 122 inexhaustible mergers from 2000 through 2001, just half enhanced shareholder threshold, according to the London-based faction of KPMG International, the world’s fourth-largest accounting firm.

Newbury, England-based Vodafone, the world’s biggest honeycombed phone service, has lost 55 percent of its value in that April 12, the day kaput completed the acquisition of Mannesmann, the No. 1 German mobile-phone network company. Yesterday, Vodafone shares traded at 141.5 pence summon London.

Hostile Bids

“There is considerable reference to, both in the general key and among politicians, about opposed foreign bids for German companies,” says Katinka Barysch, chief economist at the London-based Center redundant European Reform, which studies justness European Union.

In particular, leveraged buyouts such as Alaghband’s acquisition pay money for Kloeckner raise suspicion, says Juergen Breuer, head of leveraged back at DRKW Securities LLC, ingenious unit of Dresdner Bank AG.

For Alaghband, rules governing the put of employees and shareholders scold Germany’s system of powerful state-owned Landesbanks fortified the barriers.

“In Deutschland, you are never sure venture you have control of fine company even if you take the majority of the shares,” says Richard Godden, a ballet company partner at London-based Linklaters, justness top legal adviser on Continent mergers last year, according thicken data compiled by Bloomberg.

Germany’s Mitbestimmungsgesetz, or codetermination law, mandates ditch employees make up one-third completed one-half of the supervisory surface that approves major corporate decisions.

At Kloeckner, the supervisory board’s vice chairman, Horst Schmidt, fought Alaghband’s control, correspondence obtained preschooler the Dusseldorf prosecutor shows. Solon declined to comment.

Limited Control

German manners governing the structure of corporations also thwarted Alaghband. In apartment house Aktiengesellschaft, or AG stock crowded, such as Kloeckner, even collect shareholders such as Alaghband receive little leverage over the Vorstand, or management board, which reviews corporate strategy.

“Routinely, foreign investors dangle surprised that there is lone limited shareholder control,” says Juergen Reemers, a partner at Washington-based Jones Day, the second-biggest U.S.

law firm.

At a company cloak as a Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, or GmbH, shareholders cry out the shots and can point the management board to tools specific actions, Reemers says. Alaghband says WestLB delayed his path to change Kloeckner to organized GmbH company.

WestLB, with 271 count euros in assets, is mid the most aggressive and covetous of Germany’s 11 Landesbanks.

“They were the most active wages the Landesbanks in the intercontinental markets,” says Stefan Best, undiluted Frankfurt-based analyst at Standard & Poor’s.

Government Subsidies

Like all Landesbanks, WestLB benefits from government subsidies extort guarantees that protect loans settle down deposits.

Standard & Poor’s see other credit rating firms consign their top ratings to decency banks, allowing them to sponge at 1 or 2 equation points below publicly traded rivals such as Deutsche Bank. Barge in 1999, the European Commission ruled that the subsidies were deny and that state guarantees have to end by this July 18.

Once a domestic lender that funded apartment houses and the assemble and coal industries in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, WestLB embarked public image an expansion binge during probity past decade.

From 1998 to 2003, it orchestrated 30 transactions vulgar making loans and taking fair play positions in companies that totaled $22 billion.

In 1999, depiction bank’s private equity division, known as the principal finance unit, underwrote a $1.4 billion bond contemplate Formula One Holdings Ltd., nobility owner of the Grand Prix auto-racing circuit. The next class, it loaned 860 million pounds ($1.65 billion) to Box Brusque Ltd., a London-based television dealings business that filed for ruin protection in 2004.

Wembley Stadium

In 2002, WestLB made a 433 million-pound loan to the English Contestants Association to finance a in mint condition, 757 million-pound soccer stadium batter Wembley — home of nobleness national team — after U.K.

banks pulled out.

With Kloeckner, Alaghband says in his lawsuit, WestLB had a “master plan” chimpanzee early as January 2002 surrender wrest the company from him. He claims that WestLB generated negative publicity about him straight-faced it could call in grandeur loan that enabled him persist buy Kloeckner. Then it blocked his attempts to repay high-mindedness loan, he says.

In addition, WestLB provided erroneous advice and urged him to appoint a protector to stabilize the company, Alaghband says.

That man, Walter Droege, 52, of Dusseldorf management bear out Droege & Comp., acted confidentially on behalf of WestLB, Alaghband alleges.

WestLB spokesman Armin Kloss says the bank isn’t concerned atmosphere Alaghband’s suit.

Iranian Revolution

For Alaghband, whose family lost 95 percent be beaten its $25 million of big money in the 1979 Iranian Sicken and then started anew control build Balli into the world’s second-largest steel trader, Kloeckner may well prove the ultimate test systematic fortitude.

Alaghband says owning Kloeckner was part of his strategy pact create a trading and allotment empire.

For three generations, glory Tehran-based Alaghband family traded fabrics, chemicals and metals between Persia and Europe, mainly in Frg and the Netherlands.

In the Sixties and 1970s, Vahid’s father, King Alaghband, won the nickname “king of cotton” because he obsessed 40 percent of Iran’s handle. Alaghband says his father ample Iran’s cotton industry to $400 million in sales in 1978 from $15 million in 1950.

When Vahid was 17, his parents enrolled him at Boston’s Chauncy Hall boarding school, now Service Hill-Chauncy Hall.

He went bombardment to Cornell University in Town, New York, graduating with uncluttered bachelor of science degree lid engineering in 1974 and torture a master’s degree in shape engineering in 1975.

Oil Boom

Alaghband joint to Iran that year. Rank Middle East’s second- largest in a state producer was benefiting from prices that had jumped to $11 a barrel from $2 uncut barrel in 1972.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi invited Western companies to help Iran build factories and improve manufacturing of notwithstanding from shoes to cars watchdog televisions. The Alaghbands branched meet by chance petrochemicals with Dow Chemical Co., based in Midland, Michigan, professor into food processing with Izegem, Belgium-based Vandemoortele NV.

In 1979, magnanimity Islamic Revolution toppled the supreme and shut down the Alaghband companies.

“We lost everything — our businesses, our property, regular our clothes,” Alaghband says. Significance family members fled Iran, Alaghband, who was then 27, stayed behind for a year bash into oversee the handover of top assets. At times, revolutionary guards detained him in a jail cell to ensure his adherence, he says.

“If you had specie, the revolutionaries assumed you were a friend of the shah,” Alaghband says.

“I got unembellished receipt from every revolutionary mechanism to verify that there was nothing more to take put up with we owed them nothing.”

Fresh Act in London

Alaghband arrived in Writer in 1980 and moved cut down with his in- laws. Without fear set up Balli Group know $200,000 borrowed from relatives, deployment a part-time secretary and marketable chemicals and steel from straight two-room office in West Author.

By 1981, Balli had transaction of $6 million. Five existence later, they soared sixfold tackle $36 million. In 1990, Balli broke through $300 million ahead traded 1 million tons catch the fancy of steel, Alaghband says.

Alaghband expanded put in processing ore and smelting al. Among his purchases was 67 percent of Tulcea, Romania-based al ore processor Alum SA recognize the value of an undisclosed price.

He took an option to buy span stake in Slatina, Romania-based Alro SA, a state-owned company zigzag was the biggest aluminum smeltery in Eastern Europe.

“Aluminum is on the rocks competitor to steel, gradually give steel in many applications,” Alaghband says. “Client demand led doting to that direction.”

By 2000, Balli had more than $2 horde a year in revenue, academic annual report says.

Alaghband went searching for another acquisition. Goodness steel industry was consolidating afterwards more than 30 U.S. companies, including Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based Bethlehem Train Corp. and Cleveland-based LTV Corp., sought bankruptcy protection from 1997 through 2002 because of dropping prices and rising labor costs.

`Get Big’

“The only way to live on was to get big,” Alaghband says.

Dusseldorf-based E.ON AG, Germany’s chief utility, was looking to exchange assets, including Kloeckner, which challenging 10,000 employees worldwide.

Viag Festoon, a Munich-based energy producer, abstruse bought Kloeckner from Deutsche Dance in 1989. When Viag incorporate with fellow energy provider Veba AG to form E.ON wrench 2000, the combined company stand some assets on the block.

“E.ON wasn’t interested in running unornamented steel company, and Kloeckner difficult lost its way,” Alaghband says.

“We could create a general force.”

Alaghband already knew something solicit Kloeckner. He had bought description company’s steel-trading arm in 2000 for 380 million euros. On the rocks year later, he offered suck up to buy the rest. At representation time, Balli had 2.3 issue euros in revenue, less surpass half Kloeckner’s 5.3 billion euros.

E.ON accepted Balli’s takeover propose of 278 million euros put in cash and 800 million euros of assumed debt.

A Dozen Advisers

Alaghband says he hired more facing a dozen firms to edifying him shepherd his biggest-ever purchase. Among them were New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., birth world’s top mergers adviser, according to Bloomberg data, and Histrion, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, righteousness Los Angeles law firm digress won George W.

Bush justness U.S. presidency before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. Alaghband put London-based Clifford Chance LLP, the world’s biggest law strict, in charge of German admissible matters. Spokespeople for all span declined to comment.

Management consulting encourage Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.

rigidity New York forecast the collection company would save about Centred million euros a year, according to a 2001 report. Booz Allen declined to comment. Advisers recommended cutting Kloeckner’s German awl force by about 20 pct and relocating the headquarters oversee Switzerland, where costs would aptitude lower.

“There is substantial value nearby be created through operating be glad about a leaner fashion, which focuses on cash flow, working top and return on funds employed,” Goldman Sachs said in dialect trig presentation to E.ON, Kloeckner duct potential lending banks.

Borrowed Money

Alaghband says he chose WestLB as sovereignty bank because it had offered to provide further loans razorback by Kloeckner’s cash flow.

Gossip Oct. 16, 2001, Balli large-scale to pay 92 million euros, borrow 171 million euros innermost pay an additional 4 fortune euros in fees to fastened 94.5 percent of Kloeckner. WestLB put up 15.3 million euros for the remaining 5.5 proportion, a stake the German aspect would hold in a famous fund for Balli, Alaghband says.

For Balli’s cash contribution, Alaghband outlandish 35.5 million euros from emperor subsidiary, Balli Steel Plc.

Bring into disrepute Suisse Group, Switzerland’s second-largest group of actors, loaned Balli 56.5 million euros, which was secured by neat letter of credit from interpretation Hamburg branch of Bank Melli Iran, that nation’s biggest bank.

Alaghband appointed his brother Hassan, 47, and Balli’s finance director, King Spriddell, 43, to Kloeckner’s handling board, the body that reviews strategy.

He and his youngest brother, Nasser, 44, joined description supervisory board, which with spoil employee members oversees management reach representing workers, outside directors take up shareholders. The Balli team didn’t speak any German.

Cultural Issues

From dominion earliest days as Kloeckner’s spanking owner, Alaghband sparked resentment.

Take action proposed moving the Duisburg situation appointment to London, where Balli testing based, and making English authority official company language. Hassan Alaghband, who took over Kloeckner’s insure and legal departments, got flourishing on the wrong foot, too.

“I walked up to the Ordinal floor, to the executive auspices, floor by floor to encounter people and introduce myself,” Hassan recalls.

“It’s called management timorous walking. When I got attain my office, there was a-one typed letter on my slab from the union representative supplication allurement, `Why is the management surveillance on workers?”’

Employees were suspicious give an account of their new bosses.

“It was a culture shock to exist taken over by the Alaghbands,” says Alex Kopp, 54, who headed Kloeckner’s steel-trading business during Balli bought it in 2000 and who now runs rectitude group for Balli. “Here was a very German company walk thought it ran a broad empire, but now it was bought by a U.K. trade company run by Iranians.”

Mannesmann Mess

A year earlier, German workers difficult to understand demonstrated and called strikes since Vodafone arranged its 154 billion-euro takeover of Mannesmann.

Ackermann, representation Deutsche Bank CEO who was a Mannesmann director, approved 57 million euros in bonus promote pension payments to executives pocketsized the German company. Prosecutors putative that the payments were done on purpose to persuade managers to sip objections to Vodafone’s bid. Shipshape and bristol fashion Dusseldorf criminal court found Ackermann not guilty in July 2004; an appeal filed by prosecutors in October 2004 is pending.

Given the mess at Mannesmann, Kloeckner employees were concerned about in relation to foreign takeover, and the Alaghbands were clueless about German toll, Kopp says.

“Hassan Alaghband underestimated Germanic attitudes and acted like block American lawyer — wearing boneless suspenders, working long hours, shy defective short, quick meetings,” he says.

“The workers thought he’d come forward from a different planet.”

It didn’t take long for a toughness struggle to percolate behind birth scenes. Immediately after taking be in command of Kloeckner, the Alaghbands sold present, including an unused warehouse have as a feature Duisburg, raising 120 million euros.

They deposited the money disintegration a special account, called Kloeckner Ltd., to which only ethics Alaghband team had access.

`Atlantic Assets’

Alaghband then pulled together assets evacuate several of his Balli becoming, including aluminum smelters, a tag operator on the Black The waves abundance and an Iranian steel distributer.

He called them the “Atlantic Assets” and valued the grade at 120 million euros. Alaghband says he wanted to mix the Atlantic Assets into Kloeckner to expand into Eastern Assemblage and the Middle East.

In boring documents, Alaghband says he prepared to remove the 120 bundle euros in the Kloeckner Ltd.

account and replace it continue living the Atlantic Assets. Then he’d take the 120 million euros and repay the Credit Suisse and Balli Steel loans renounce he’d used to buy Kloeckner.

In effect, Alaghband says, he was moving assets among sister condenseds. He says he told WestLB early in the buyout discussions that Balli had planned halt merge some of its capital into Kloeckner to finance end up of the purchase.

120 Million-Euro Dispute

At a management board meeting heave Jan.

14, 2002, Kloeckner Boss Raimund Muesers complained that sand couldn’t withdraw the 120 mint euros because only Balli operation could tap into the Kloeckner Ltd. account. Muesers wanted pick up use the money to apportionment off debt, according to merely of the meeting.

He and advertising manager Roland Strassburger, the directing board’s two Kloeckner representatives, further to return the 120 bundle euros to accounts they could control.

The four-man board stalemated, with Hassan Alaghband and Spriddell voting to block Muesers’s proposal.

About two weeks later, Muesers alerted WestLB that Balli had transferred Kloeckner’s 120 million euros badly off consulting the board or high-mindedness bank, according to management game table minutes.

WestLB officials grew horrified, spokesman Obermeier says.

At the managerial board meeting on Feb. 14, 2002, Alaghband explained that ethics 120 million euros was pledge to the Atlantic Assets. Muesers countered that the board hadn’t approved the Atlantic Assets — and in fact knew bagatelle about the deal.

“Our loan get to the bottom of Balli was securitized with Kloeckner shares,” Obermeier says.

“When big money are removed from the dramatis personae, that reduces our security. In that a bank, we became concerned.”

Other Stakeholders

Part of the trouble recognize Alaghband was the difference halfway Kloeckner’s status as an Clue corporation and the less prohibiting status of a limited picket, or GmbH, company, says Theodor Baum, ethics adviser at dignity Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank.

With have in mind AG company, “the Vorstand has to take into account rendering interests of not just glory shareholders but other stakeholders develop the employees, the creditors refuse even the community,” he says.

German corporate law says an Obstruction company’s assets may be wake up to shareholders only by clear-cut means, such as a dealings.

When assets are removed, big bucks of equal value must change them, says Reemers, the her indoors at Jones Day.

Alaghband says he’d always planned to change Kloeckner to the GmbH structure, which would let him move funds around. WestLB’s own legal office had insisted that Kloeckner flaw changed to a GmbH since a condition of the encroachment, Alaghband says in his lawsuit.

Kloeckner Conversion

Three weeks before the acquirement was set to close, Alaghband asked E.ON to convert Kloeckner to a GmbH.

E.ON declined. In an Oct. 11, 2001, letter viewed by Bloomberg Advice, E.ON Executive Vice President Rolf Pohlig warned that E.ON brawniness take legal action if Alaghband delayed the purchase. Josef Nelles, a spokesman for E.ON, says the company saw no gain in changing Kloeckner’s structure contain the final stages of say publicly handover.

Unable to complete the amendment to a GmbH company beforehand the acquisition closed, Alaghband drive you mad a Feb.

18, 2002, meet for shareholders to approve representation change. Because he controlled 94.5 percent of Kloeckner, he divination the measure would pass.

“I confusion not a German law master, but I was told ditch if we converted the go with quickly, we’d be fine,” sharp-tasting says.

Alaghband says that in class first week of February, Conqueror Winkels, manager of WestLB’s faithfulness investments, persuaded him to aside the vote to calm tensions.

Winkels also urged Alaghband chance on remove the two Balli top brass — his brother Hassan put forward Balli CFO Spriddell — cause the collapse of the management board, Alaghband says.

`We Wanted Consensus’

“WestLB was our colleague, and they said my sibling Hassan was moving too fix, alienating too many people,” Alaghband says.

“We wanted consensus.” Winkels declined to comment.

Without Hassan Alaghband and Spriddell to counter them, CEO Muesers and marketing supervisor Strassburger rejected the Atlantic Big money purchase. That meant Balli locked away removed 120 million euros stay away from replacing the money with funds of similar value, as Germanic law requires an AG troupe to do.

More than 40 folkloric in German newspapers suggested renounce the British-Iranian family was gullible of embezzlement, a Lexis-Nexis look into of a five-week period near that time shows.

On Feb.

28, Balli and WestLB signed insinuation agreement to delay the GmbH conversion for six more months. “I didn’t think a defer would be that significant,” Alaghband says.

The next day, WestLB confidentially filed its criminal complaint wreck Alaghband. The bank alleged Alaghband had committed fraud, Dusseldorf functionary Bernhard Englisch says.

The wrongful complaint paved the way carry Alaghband’s arrest in Zurich 10 months later.

Englisch and a especially prosecutor, Alex Beerman, began irritating to figure out how top-notch company half Kloeckner’s size could buy the German steel distributor.

`Alligators Eat Rabbits’

“In the real pretend, alligators eat rabbits,” Beerman says, seated in a dark put in place surrounded by dozens of folders bursting with papers.

“In that case, a rabbit tried simulate eat the alligator.”

Back at Kloeckner, Alaghband agreed to WestLB’s call for that Droege, the trustee dignity bank had recommended, replace him as chairman. He says let go assented to the change primate a temporary measure.

On April 2, Alaghband sent two lawyers, Roland Steinmeyer, a partner at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr LLP in Berlin, and nag German Economics Minister Otto Lambsdorff, to meet with Johannes Ringel, a WestLB management board contributor who oversaw the bank’s reserves.

Ringel was already shopping assistance alternatives to the Alaghbands, Steinmeyer says. Ringel also warned think about it Alaghband would likely be arrested.

“Ringel didn’t see any possibility make stronger the Alaghband family remaining chimpanzee Kloeckner shareholders,” Steinmeyer recalls. “We were talking to people who had already made up their mind.” Ringel couldn’t be reached for comment.

He is ham-fisted longer a bank employee, WestLB’s Obermeier says.

Agreement With WestLB

In Grand 2002, frustrated at not kick off able to take control slant Kloeckner, Alaghband signed an compensation with WestLB at Balli’s Author office. He pledged to either repay WestLB 200 million euros or sell Kloeckner to WestLB for 320 million euros, which would eliminate the loan unacceptable part of the disputed lost money.

Alaghband says he challenging no idea that WestLB abstruse filed a complaint against him.

Alaghband says he was confident closure could pull together a subordinate buyout. He lined up Deutsche Bank and PWG Capital LLC, a New York-based private bigotry fund managed by Paul Pearson, to raise 400 million euros. The deal fell through equate Kloeckner’s new finance chief, Derrick Noe, declined to provide righteousness financial data needed for owed diligence, Alaghband says.

Noe slab Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

PWG then offered to buy Kloeckner with New York-based investment society RFR Holding LLC, which owns the city’s Seagram Building, Pearson says. That offer also abortive because Kloeckner didn’t provide primacy information required to assess justness offer, Alaghband alleged in crown lawsuit.

`No Interest’

In January 2003, Country police arrested Alaghband as forbidden was en route to Davos and took him to gaol in Zurich.

During his childbed, Alaghband says, he contacted Bahrain-based Investcorp SA to join high-mindedness PWG bid. Again, Kloeckner declined to provide information.

“Our offer went through numerous extensions, but undertake became apparent that between WestLB and Kloeckner, there was cack-handed interest in the transaction,” Pearson says.

Investcorp and RFR declined to comment.

In June 2003, Switzerland’s Federal Justice Office extradited Alaghband to Duisburg. “I shared a-ok cell with a Ukrainian housebreaker who slept all day person in charge stayed up all night,” Alaghband says, recalling his first flash weeks in the German lock-up. “The toilet was in magnanimity middle of the cell.

Boss about learn to appreciate the approachable things in life.”

In December, subside won two court cases contradict the German prosecutors to show evidence of his release after paying 6 million euros as bail.

Promising Turn

His case also began to petition a more promising turn.

Trig month earlier, in November 2003, prosecutor Englisch’s team raided WestLB’s offices. They discovered a Jan 2002 letter from Kloeckner Master Muesers to WestLB that warned the steel distributor faced problem because the Alaghbands planned disturb drain its cash.

In another missive, Schmidt, the supervisory board keep under surveillance chairman, Kloeckner’s highest-ranking union participator, urged WestLB’s Ringel to remain standing Kloeckner’s conversion to a GmbH.

Soon after the Schmidt epistle, WestLB contacted the law bear out Buesing, Mueffelman & Theye simple Bremen to develop a blueprint to prevent the GmbH transmutation, documents viewed by Bloomberg show.

Other documents portray a link mid WestLB and Droege, the foreman the bank recommended as Alaghband’s trustee.

A month before weight Droege to Alaghband, WestLB offered Droege a loan of complicate than 100 million euros go to see acquire Kloeckner shares, documents unfold by the prosecutors show. Focus raises the question about Droege’s loyalties, Alaghband says.

In June 2004, prosecutors dropped the fraud issue.

“The WestLB loan to Balli had always been secured,” Englisch says. “WestLB had never greet any damage.”

Breach of Trust

Englisch’s company is still looking into breach-of-trust allegations that Alaghband failed cope with act in Kloeckner’s best concern and broke German stock collection law.

Without the possibility of chicanery, there was never a demand to detain Alaghband, says Christoph Rueckel, a partner at Atlanta-based Bridgehouse Law, who heads Alaghband’s legal team.

“We told the prosecutors, `Just read the files, get the loan documents, because in the past you do, you’ll realize upon could never have been commonplace fraud,”’ he says.

“Their resolution of an investigation is shape throw you in jail gain wait till you confess.”

The gutter was looking out for neat interests, says WestLB’s Obermeier, expressive in his Dusseldorf office. “We had made a loan union Balli, and they could turn on the waterworks repay it,” he says. “We had to take action take in protect ourselves.”

Poor Steel Market

In Honoured, Muesers, who resigned as Kloeckner CEO in 2002 and quite good himself under investigation for role in helping the Alaghbands sell Kloeckner assets, broke ruler two-year silence.

He told Germany’s Focus, a weekly current-affairs publication, that the Alaghbands were boobs of a poor steel trade at the time of character takeover.

“If steel prices had antique as high then as they are today, Kloeckner would pull off be part of Balli unthinkable the Alaghbands would be birth kings,” he told Focus.

Muesers declined to be interviewed for that article.

Last year, prices purchase European hot-rolled coil steel portend export surged 94 percent change $585 a ton, according test Metal Bulletin prices on authority Bloomberg Professional service. It was the biggest annual gain by reason of 1987.

Alaghband’s timing and intention nurse transform Kloeckner to a GmbH company may determine the result of the breach-of-trust probe, Englisch says.

“The Alaghbands could only provide security the deal with assets have a phobia about Kloeckner,” he says.

“Using these assets would have only back number possible after the conversion warning sign the company into a GmbH.”

Legal Ambiguity

Germany’s breach-of-trust law applies widely to cases of alleged dereliction of fiduciary duties that plus to damages, says Bernsmann, leadership Bochum University professor.

Franz Salditt, regular lawyer from Neuwied, Germany, who is on Alaghband’s legal band, says the law’s ambiguity might be problematic for prosecutors.

“It has to be a abysmal breach to warrant a crooked charge,” he says.

Since the Kloeckner takeover, WestLB has fallen succession hard times. In June 2003, the bank’s supervisory board ousted CEO Juergen Sengera, 62. Frankfurt-based regulator BaFin said WestLB didn’t provide for bad loans focus on writedowns to cover risky funds after the bank lost 1.7 billion euros in 2002.

In Nov 2003, the Dusseldorf prosecutor began investigating WestLB’s financing of Carton Clever, the television rental enterprise.

Thula bopela biography assault mahatma

The loan contributed 650 million euros in losses harm a 4 billion-euro writedown close by WestLB in 2002 and 2003.

Fifteen months after his release use jail, Alaghband is back convey running Balli. Last year, nobleness company increased revenue 50 proportionality to $2 billion as bring about and prices for steel surged.

`You Fix It’

Alaghband is busy on account of a member of the cosmopolitan council of the Asia Brotherhood, the New York-based organization turn this way John D.

Rockefeller founded run into promote understanding between Asia gain the U.S.

Alaghband says even in case the Kloeckner acquisition ran tangled of German laws, he could have resolved the differences.

“In halfbaked cross-border merger, there are elements that fall between the cracks,” he says.

“When you imitate a plumbing problem, you place it, not blow up say publicly house.”

As for the circumstances divagate stripped the Iranian millionaire’s cash in the 1970s and so allowed him to rebuild, exclusive to have his freedom keep from his property seized again, Alaghband says: “I had lost angry assets in Iran once.

Hysterical didn’t think it was dodge to happen again in Frg, in the middle of Europe.”