Brooge Energy, former executives charged with fraud by SEC

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against Brooge Energy Limited, a publicly-traded energy company located in the United Arab Emirates, the company’s former CEO, Nicolaas Lammert Paardenkooper, and its former Chief Strategy Officer and Interim CEO, Lina Saheb. According to the SEC order, before and after going public through a special purpose acquisition transaction, Brooge, whose securities trade on NASDAQ, misstated between 30 and 80 percent of its revenues from 2018 through early 2021 in SEC filings related to the offer and sale of up to $500M of securities. The order finds that Brooge created false invoices to support inflating revenues from its oil facilities in Fujairah, UAE by over $70M over three years, and that Paardenkooper and Saheb knew, or were reckless in not knowing, of the fraud. The SEC order also finds that Brooge provided these false invoices to its auditors to conceal the inflated revenue. Brooge agreed to settle the SEC’s charges that found the company violated the antifraud, proxy statement, reporting, and books and records provisions of the federal securities laws and to pay a $5M penalty. Paardenkooper and Saheb also agreed to settle the charges, to each pay $100,000 civil penalties, and to permanent officer and director bars.