Why plaintiffs dropped the suit remains unknown.
Red Granite Pictures may still be under investigation by the federal government, but the company has one less legal nightmare to worry about now that a civil racketeering lawsuit has been dropped.
Two Malaysian citizens spearheaded a putative class action against the company, along with principals Riza Aziz and Joey McFarland, claiming Red Granite misappropriated money from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund to produce The Wolf of Wall Street.
Why Matthias Chang and Husam Musa decided to drop their claim remains to be seen. They moved to voluntarily dismiss the suit without prejudice, according to court documents filed Friday, so they could take another shot at it. Plaintiffs’ attorney Louis Burke has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Red Granite sent The Hollywood Reporter a statement Friday: “Dismissing this frivolous lawsuit was the right thing to do because it never should have been filed in the first place. Red Granite continues to work on exciting new projects.”
The Department of Justice is still investigating the film’s funding but, last month a court agreed to allow the producers to continue working as usual while that plays out.
Husam who is Salor assemblyman and Chang, a former lawyer for retired prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, were reported to have filed a class action civil racketeering lawsuit on August 11 in a New York district court seeking custodianship of US$1 billion (RM4.12 billion) in assets the US Department of Justice previously claimed to be stolen from 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
The suit had named McFarland; Riza; Low Taek Jho, Low’s tax attorney Debra Whelan Johnson and her firm Metropolis IX Capital Advisors LLC; Goldman Sachs Group and its former banker Timothy Leissner as defendants.
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