FORMER TAQA CEO Peter Barker-Homek is taking legal action in the US over forced dismissal after he tried to put a stop to alleged inappropriate activities in the company.
Peter Barker-Homek has filed a lawsuit against the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, known as TAQA, for a breach of contract after deputy general manager Carl Sheldon allegedly forced him to sign a ‘severance agreement’ to step down as CEO last October.
TAQA says it will repsond via the appropriate legal channels to these "spurious allegations".
According to a suit filed on August 27 by his attorney, Miller Barondess, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Barker-Homek was threatened with arrest and imprisonment if he didn’t comply.
Barker-Homek, who led TAQA with about a dozen global acquisitions in three years, claims he tried to break several inappropriate practices at the company which includes “kickbacks, bribery, accounting fraud and corruption”.
In the lawsuit, he alleges TAQA was inappropriately carrying the assets and liabilities of an affiliated company on its balance sheet; he also alleged influence of board members to steer business to outside companies, in one case because of an alleged kickback scheme involving leased cars.
The former CEO is seeking at least $460 million in compensatory and exemplary damages for “humiliation, anxiety, severe emotional distress, worry, fear, and injury to his reputation.”
The Abu Dhabi-listed company, which owns assets in oil and gas production and power generation in the Middle East, North America, the North Sea and India, said it will “respond to the filing in due course through the appropriate legal channels.”
In a statement it said: “TAQA takes any challenge to its reputation extremely seriously and will defend itself vigorously and the individuals named against the spurious allegations made in the filing.”
On October 16, 2009, TAQA announced Barker-Homek’s resignation after he had “decided to pursue other career ambitions.”
He had been succeeded temporarily by the company's former deputy general manager and general counsel, Carl Sheldon. Later in April, Abdulla Saif Al-Nuaimi was named as Barker-Homek’s permanent successor.
TAQA, 75% owned by Abu Dhabi government, holds energy assets exceeding $24.5 billion and had 2008 revenue of $4.4 billion. Its shares have fallen about 27% since mid-October.
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