The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale - Audiobook (Unabridged)

Arif Naqvi was charismatic, inspiring, and self-made—all the qualities of a successful businessman who had nowhere to go but up. As the founder and chief executive of Abraaj Group, a Dubai-based private-equity firm, Naqvi espoused the belief that private investors were better-placed to solve poverty than politicians. He positioned himself as a financial hero who aimed to foster global development and end poverty and conflict in the developing world through impact investing—all while generating double-digit returns. Prominent investors from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Bank of America to the U.S., British, and French governments gave Abraaj billions of dollars to manage. Through his work, Naqvi built Abraaj into a money-making machine that operated in six continents and managed almost $14 billion of investment funds. Then, in late 2017, Clark and Louch received an anonymous email from an Abraaj employee bringing to light an ongoing fraud investigation—and the illusion was shattered. Rather than operating an investment firm meant to improve billions of lives, Naqvi stood accused of swindling investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, breaking laws, and offering bribes to sustain his lifestyle. Clark and Louch uncovered private documents and exchanges, and interviewed numerous sources, which all pointed to the massive theft and fraud at Abraaj. In April 2019—six months after their exposé broke—Naqvi was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London on charges of financial fraud, and he is set to stand trial in the U.S. for operating a criminal organization. While Naqvi had hoped to weave Abraaj's story as a global vision of capitalism prevailing over poverty, it will instead go down in infamy as one of the largest corporate scandals in history. Populated by a cast of larger-than-life characters and settings both glitzy and gritty, The Key Man is a narrative that not only encapsulates the story of Naqvi and Abraaj, but also explores the broader arc of global capital flow in the early 21st century. In a society where institutional transparency and accountability have become essential, Clark and Louch shine a spotlight on the black-box nature of the private equity industry, its concentrated wealth and heavy returns on investments, and the way it is used to bypass the scrutiny and regulatory controls of public markets. Read Less