Abraaj managed $13.6B for the emerging world — $230M of it went somewhere else

The Abraaj Group, founded in Dubai in 2002 by Arif Naqvi, grew into the largest private equity firm in the emerging markets, with about $13.6 billion under management, investing from Africa to Latin America, and counting development agencies and pension funds among its investors. Its flagship story was the Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund: a billion-dollar vehicle to build hospitals and clinics in the countries that needed them most.

In early 2018 several of those investors, including the Gates Foundation, began asking where the health fund's money actually was, and hired auditors to trace it. The answers brought the firm down within months: Naqvi stepped aside in April, and by mid-2018 Abraaj was in liquidation proceedings. The SEC's 2019 complaint alleged that Naqvi had taken about $230 million from the health fund and commingled investor money with the management company's own accounts, using new funds to cover old obligations.

The regulatory reckoning followed: the Dubai Financial Services Authority fined Abraaj a record $314.6 million in 2019, and Naqvi personally $135.6 million in 2022; two former executives pleaded guilty to US charges, and Naqvi lost his final UK extradition appeal in March 2023. The funds themselves were salvaged by other managers — Actis and Colony took over portfolios — but Abraaj was gone. The case rewrote the emerging-markets playbook: LPs now audit where the money sits, not just what the returns report.