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Photo courtesy of BET.
Summary: Ice Cube is suing the investors of Big3 for defaming his character.
Ice Cube has filed a lawsuit against the investors of his basketball league, stating that they not only stiffed him but spread false rumors after they were frozen out of the league.
The rapper-turned-actor and his partner Jeff Kwatinetz are suing Qatar Investment Authority CEO Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed bun Saud Al Thani for $1.2 billion. They allege defamation, trade libel, and other charges; and the lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles on Thursday.
Cube’s company, Big3, is a league that allows players to play basketball 3 on 3, and games are aired on Fox Sports. Cube and Kwatinetz said that the Qatari investors claimed to have connections to the royal family but were only able to pay half of the money agreed upon to invest in the new sports league, according to Deadline.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs said that the investors spread rumors about the league’s players and even called them by racist language. The plaintiffs said that the investors also lied to players and outsiders that the basketball league was poorly managed.
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“When Ice Cube and Jeff Kwatinetz pursued their lifelong dream of starting a basketball league from the ground up, and invested their personal assets and time in doing so, the last thing on their list of plausible concerns and impediments would be the malicious and reckless conduct of foreign actors and compromised agents and actors working on their behalf,” the lawsuit said.
Ice Cube’s vision was to take 3 on 3 basketball from the playground to the major leagues, and he and his partner said that the initial games in June 2017 proved that their concept could be successful. After those games, the plaintiffs said that three investors appeared– Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, Faisal Al-Hamadi, and Ayman Sabi. These three men formed the group Sport Trinity whose benefactor was Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Sau Al Thani, chief executive of the Qatari Investment Authority.
The plaintiffs said they expected their new investors to be passive, but instead, the men tried to ingrain themselves into the league’s operations. This included showering players with gifts and taking them on yacht parties. However, although they were quick to show off their lavish lifestyle they were slow at opening their wallets as per their deal.
“These members and associates of the royal family made excuse after excuse for not paying, all of which is documented in text messages and emails, where the blame for their failure to fund the millions they owed to Big3 ran the gamut from their ‘sinuses,’ ‘hiking,’ it being a ‘long day bro,’ and to bad press regarding Qatar associations with alleged funding of terrorism,” the lawsuit said.
Big3 is represented by celebrity attorney Mark Geragos who is also a league investor.
The plaintiffs said that they hired a law firm in July of 2017 to collect the remaining millions of money the investors owed, and that the case is in arbitration. The lawsuit filed this week is a defamation lawsuit that seeks to recover millions from the harm the investors’ allegedly inflicted on the plaintiffs’ reputations.
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We received a statement from a Qatar Investment Authority spokesperson about this article on April 12, 2018, and wish to include it for clarification: “This article includes a number of allegations that are unfounded and incorrect. Among others, neither the Qatar Investment Authority nor its CEO are investors in, nor have they had any involvement with, Big3.”
