The rollercoaster ride for creditors chasing bankrupt theme park investor
It was billed as Britain’s answer to Disneyland Paris.
Unveiled in 2012, plans for the vast 900-acre theme park in Kent dazzled locals with boasts of building Europe’s largest indoor water park, a host of Mission Impossible-themed rollercoasters and the creation of 27,000 jobs. Hollywood giant Paramount ramped up the excitement, announcing it would be a key partner in the £3.5bn development as part of a licensing agreement.
But more than a decade on, the plan is in tatters and the mastermind behind it has been declared bankrupt. Kuwaiti investor Abdulla Al-Humaidi found himself battling against his glamourous American former partners, who were owed £13.5m, in a court case that saw the theme park company being accused of presenting “sham” debts to reach a more tolerable insolvency agreement. The theme park company was ultimately put into liquidation.
Al-Humaidi had it all planned out for him. His family made a fortune in real estate in Kuwait. After getting a degree from a medical school in Dublin, he looked to replicate their success in the UK by extending his family business through Kuwaiti European Holdings (KEH) and trying to make a splash with the massive theme park project south east of London.
He has blamed the UK’s planning rules for “destroying” his life – not an altogether unreasonable complaint given the project got tangled up by literal spider webs and bombshell interventions from national environmental bodies.
Alongside his bankruptcy, Al-Humaidi was forced to resign from the non-league side Ebbsfleet United FC, in which he owned a stake, and faced questions over his funding sources. He was also convicted of fraud in Kuwait and given a prison sentence – though lawyers are contesting the cases.
Investors who were promised a world-beating holiday resort have been left wondering if they will ever get hold of the remaining assets that they believe should be handed over by the Kuwaiti investor.
A High Court judge blasted Al-Humaidi’s “foot-dragging” and resistance in sharing information that has resulted in creditors still struggling to get a hold of assets belonging to the beleaguered entrepreneur.
Al-Humaidi now has less than 12 months to comply with investigations of his assets or face the “teeth of criminal consequences”.
Bankrupt tycoon’s case slides into chaos
It is only through a string of court cases levelled against Al-Humaidi that the extent of his business dealings are coming to full view, serving as a warning for anyone who gets too excited about big cash injections for bold, ambitious projects in the UK.
Creditors, who are represented by restructuring trustees from the advisory firm Interpath, are attempting to figure out what belongs to Al-Humaidi in order to know what they can recover.
This has become something of a challenge for them because it’s unclear how much of his own family business he owned.
The size of Al-Humaidi’s stake in his holding company appears to have changed at different times. That’s not by itself unusual – directors will often buy up or sell down their shareholding over time..
Except Al-Humaidi is accused of providing the wrong details at the wrong times. In a 2020 witness statement, he said his shareholding in KEH was 50 per cent. But a share register from 2019 actually showed it to be 29 per cent. The Kuwaiti investor said he did “not have access to the company records” when he provided a witness statement in 2020. Though this argument was “right”, according to Judge Mullen, his apparent inability to come up with evidence about his shareholding in the family investment business was deemed “incredible” by the same official.
Creditors were also distrustful of Al-Humaidi given that, once, on the same day a licensing form said Al-Humaidi owned zero per cent of the club, another form said he owned the whole club.
The judge said creditors were reasonable to be doubtful about what Al-Humaidi told them at face value, adding that he had done “little to assist them”. Mullen also reprimanded Al-Humaidi over another “plain example of non-cooperation” when Al-Humaidi was found to be unable to explain the terms of a £9.5m payment made from KEH to his mother in 2017. The payment is argued to be crucial to understand the size of his shareholding in the family company.
Al-Humaidi: This is absurd
Al-Humaidi was also criticised for his “obstructively legalistic approach” when asked to share details about two Egyptian resorts that were said to be owned by KEH.
He previously said the subsidiary company for the two resorts – pithily titled Saudi Tourism and Real Estate Investment Company – underpinned up to 90 per cent of KEH’s total assets. After a series of questions from creditors, Al-Humaidi erupted.
“Frankly, this is getting absurd. My duty to cooperate relates to my bankruptcy. These requests of information pertain to the dealings of third-party entities that are independent and separate to my bankruptcy, and in respect of whose information I am unaware of,” he said.
“The trustees are attempting to pierce the corporate veil and assume corporate assets as assets of the [bankruptcy] estate.”
By that time, he had sent an email to the trustees, using as evidence a Google Maps pin…on just one of the resorts (investigators had asked for the location of both resorts in Egypt). The judge said he was “sitting on his hands” – and appears to have highlighted the incident as just one of several “delaying tactic[s]” Al-Humaidi used during investigations on his bankruptcy. Al-Humaidi was condemned for “pointless quibble” in refusing to sign forms that used the word “consent” rather than “non-objection”.
The end of amusement
Al-Humaidi has been forced to personally pay for the legal costs of the application outside of his bankruptcy estate. He will not have to disclose the source of his legal funding but a judge hinted trustees could make a separate application.
2026 will also be another year wherein trustees will have to continue investigating Al-Humaidi and eventually file a report on whether he has complied with obligations to cooperate.
It might be the year when, 14 years after newspapers and broadcasters around the country trumpeted the hotly-anticipated arrival of ‘Dartford Disneyland’, the rollercoaster ride draws to a close. However, Al-Humaidi’s link to the Kent region may linger on. His family is behind a property group that has reportedly backed a new development near the site where the theme park was planned to be built.
Al-Humaidi’s legal representatives declined to comment. His fight with Kuwaiti authorities and bankruptcy trustees has not ended. And so it seems it may be months before the bumpy ride comes to its finish – if it ever will.