Tom Ridge, JetSmarter Board End Court Fight With Kazakh Oligarch

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and other ex-board members at JetSmarter Inc., a once high-flying private aviation startup, settled their four-year court fight with a fund run by the grandson of Kazakhstan’s longtime dictator.

An Emirati investment fund led by Nurali Aliyev—a grandson of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan for three decades—moved Sunday to drop a lawsuit it filed in 2020 against Ridge, JetSmarter founder Sergey Petrossov, and a third director, LVMH ex-CEO Christophe Navarre.

The confidential accord resolves claims that the board duped the fund, KZ Capital General Trading LLC, into handing control of JetSmarter to Clearlake Capital Group LP. A judge in 2022 threw out wider-ranging allegations that Petrossov scammed members, lied to the public, and steered the business into a wave of scandal.

JetSmarter, once backed by the Saudi royal family and celebrities including the hip-hop star Jay-Z, was sold in 2019 to Vista Global Holding Ltd.—an Emirati aviation conglomerate founded by Swiss businessman Thomas Flohr—and folded into another of its brands. KZ Capital’s lawsuit was filed in Delaware’s Chancery Court.

Nazarbayev Regime Ties

Aliyev, who wasn’t directly involved in the court fight, was described by the Times of London before the fall of his grandfather’s regime as the man being “groomed for power” in Kazakhstan, where he chairs one of the country’s largest telecommunications companies. Nazarbayev, his mother’s father, controlled Kazakhstan after the collapse of the Soviet Union until stepping down in 2019 in favor of a hand-picked successor.

Nazarbayev, who took the title “leader of the nation,” surrendered additional legal privileges after a wave of violent civil unrest in 2022 that led to the intervention of the Russian military. His daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva—one of the wealthiest people in Kazakhstan—is a former chair of the country’s senate who has held a long list of political posts.

Aliyev’s father, Rakhat Aliyev, died in 2015 in an Austrian prison, where he was being held in connection with the murders of two bankers in Kazakhstan. Austria had refused to extradite Rakhat, who faced a slew of political charges at home, including a treason conviction for allegedly plotting a coup against his father-in-law.

Nurali Aliyev’s brother Aisultan Nazarbayev was a professional soccer player who died in London in 2020, aged 29, of apparent cardiac arrest after seeking political asylum in the UK. Aliyev and his mother defeated a bid by the UK government the same year to seize three mansions under the country’s “McMafia” money laundering laws.

Ridge, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, was the first head of the Department of Homeland Security, which was created by the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. Navarre, who left LVMH in 2017, now runs his own investment firm and sits on the board of the company that operates the Casino de Monte-Carlo.

KZ Capital was represented by Offit Kurman PA. JetSmarter, Ridge, and Navarre were represented by Greenberg Traurig LLP. Petrossov was represented by Berger McDermott LLP.

The case is KZ Cap. Gen. Trading LLC v. Sergey Petrossov, Del. Ch., No. 2020-0750, 8/11/24.