"Truly Extraordinary": Flexibility In Granting Winding Up Orders

In a further installment in one of the "world's greatest financial scandal[s]"¹ – the 1MDB fraud, the Cayman Court dismissed two summonses to set aside the winding-up of PetroSaudi International Limited (PSI) and the court-supervised liquidation of PetroSaudi Oil Services Limited (PSOS).

Re Petrosaudi² illustrates the flexibility which the Cayman Court has to grant winding-up orders, but cautions against doing so on an ex parte basis, where there is no longer any valid reason to do so.

PSI and the 1MDB fraud

In December 2024, the official liquidator of Bridge Global Absolute Return Fund SPC (Petitioner), applied for an order restoring PSI to the register of companies and for its subsequent winding up (Petition). The Petition claimed that PSI and its principals, including Mr. Tarek Obaid (founder and former director of PSI), were key participants in a scheme to defraud 1MDB and its sister company of some US$7.78 billion and that the Petitioner was a contingent