Kazakh Oligarch’s Emirati Fund Sues Tom Ridge Over JetSmarter

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and other directors of JetSmarter—a struggling private aviation “unicorn” once backed by Jay-Z and the Saudi royal family—were sued in Delaware by an Emirati private equity firm run by the grandson of Kazakhstan’s former longtime dictator.

While “JetSmarter bled money,” it sought to boost its enrollment numbers through repeated “cash grabs” aimed at members, the Chancery Court complaint says. Meanwhile, it allegedly changed its terms retroactively and “manipulated the numbers” to investors by counting lapsed members as current ones.

Although Ridge wasn’t behind those “schemes,” he “had no idea whether the representations were fake” ...