Gide secures the French Supreme Court’s final confirmation that a near-USD 500 million attachment on Libyan sovereign wealth fund assets was void

In a judgment of 1 October 2026, the French Supreme Court’s Second Civil Chamber dismissed the appeal brought by Al-Kharafi, a Kuwaiti construction company, and gave final confirmation that a 2013 attachment on close to USD 500 million of assets belonging to our client, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), was void.

The judgment was issued by one of the Cour de cassation’s most solemn formations and raised a novel question at the crossroads of civil procedure, private international law and fundamental rights.

At issue was whether a foreign company facing an attachment and alleged to lack independence from a foreign State (the alter ego doctrine), can be bound by notice of the attachment served only on that State.

Al-Kharafi argued that LIA was bound by notice it claimed was served on the Libyan State in 2013, rendering LIA’s 2021 challenge inadmissible.

The Cour de cassation ruled in LIA’s favor. Regardless of any debate over its autonomy or status as an emanation, the Court held that “to preserve its right to a remedy, LIA, a distinct entity from the debtor State with its own legal personality, must itself have had knowledge of the attachment, independently of notice served on the debtor State.”

The Cour de cassation accordingly upheld the Court of Appeal’s ruling that LIA’s challenge was admissible and that the attachment was void because it targeted frozen assets – relying, on that point, on three earlier Cour de cassation judgments obtained by our firm in the same case, dated 7 September 2022 and 5 February 2026.

The Gide team was composed of Jean-Sébastien Bazille, Partner, and Yohan Bendao, Associate, working with Emmanuelle Trichet, attorney-at-law before the Cour de cassation.