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A director of oil trader Gulf Petrochem has denied knowing the now-defunct oil trader issued forged invoices, and claims a £97.3mn judgment against him in favour of BNP Paribas was obtained “by fraud”.

BNP Paribas won a summary judgment against Prerit Goel in a UAE court in 2023, claiming Goel had personal liability for loans the bank had provided to Gulf Petrochem, which collapsed in 2020.

The French lender is now seeking to enforce the judgment in the UK, where Goel resides. In a defence document filed in a London court on February 20, Goel denies knowing about or being involved in the production of forged invoices.

BNP Paribas’ Swiss entity alleged that Gulf Petrochem began issuing fake invoices from March 2020, citing suppliers that later denied selling any cargoes to Gulf Petrochem.

Goel’s defence notes that BNP Paribas’ claim does not directly link him to the transactions, and adds: “Invoices were produced by [Gulf Petrochem’s] finance department and the defendant had no knowledge of or involvement in the day to day operations of this department.”

He said the plea of fraud is “an improper attempt to plead irrelevant prejudicial material and should be withdrawn”.

Goel urged the court not to recognise the UAE judgment in the UK. He alleges he was not notified of BNP Paribas’ lawsuit against him in the UAE and that the bank “fraudulently concealed the existence” of the suit to prevent him “having the opportunity to defend it”.

The bank first tried to serve the suit by courier to a disused business address, and then obtained permission to serve notice by newspaper advertisement, Goel says, even though it had previously communicated with him via email.

Goel argues that in any case, the UAE court had no jurisdiction to hear the dispute because he is not resident in the country and had “not submitted to the jurisdiction of the UAE courts”. He also says an appeal against the court’s jurisdiction remains pending.

BNP Paribas argued in the UAE proceedings that Goel and the other individual defendants had “personal and direct liability for all the obligations owed” by Gulf Petrochem.

But Goel says he never gave any personal guarantees or indemnities concerning Gulf Petrochem’s liabilities to the bank. Nor, he says, did he breached an undertaking to notify it if the trader’s adjusted tangible net worth fell below US$350mn.

BNP Paribas is also attempting to get the UAE judgment enforced by a court in India. The bank did not respond to a request for comment.

The row adds to the pile of litigation over the last five years as banks try to recoup losses from lending to Gulf Petrochem, part of the GP Global group, alongside a restructuring process.

Lenders including Arab Bank Switzerland, Banque Cantonale de Genève, Fimbank and UniCredit have launched lawsuits outside of the restructuring, mostly stemming from credit insurance policies and misdelivery claims against ship owners. BNP Paribas is the only one to have explicitly alleged fraud by the trader.

The GP Global group reported revenue of more than US$6bn in 2019, according to its restructuring advisors, and had around US$1.2bn debt when its liquidity dried up in mid-2020.

This article and headline was updated on February 27, 2025, to reflect that Prerit Goel is a current director of Gulf Petrochem, not a former director.