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The boss of P&O Ferries owner, DP World, has left the company after revelations over his ties with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein forced the ports and logistics company to take action.
Dubai-based DP World, which is ultimately owned by Dubai’s royal family, announced Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem’s departure as the group’s chair and chief executive on Friday.
Sulayem – the brother of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the head of the FIA, which governs the world’s motor sport championships including Formula One – has been under intense pressure after the publication of messages with Epstein.
Documents disclosed by the US Department of Justice revealed that Sulayem emailed Epstein in 2015 that he met a girl “two years ago” who went to an American university in Dubai was “the best sex I ever had amazing body”.
He said: “She got engaged but now she back with me.”
Thomas Massie, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, who has inspected unredacted Epstein files, said earlier this week that the justice department also appeared to confirm that Sulayem was the recipient of an email from Epstein in which he said: “I loved the torture video.”
The Dubai government’s statement on Friday did not mention Sulayem but announced that Essa Kazim had been named as the chair and Yuvraj Narayan as the chief executive.
Earlier this week, two of DP World’s largest international partners, including Canada’s La Caisse pension fund and British International Investment, said they would halt future deals with the group.
Sulayem had helped transform DP World from an operator of Dubai’s Jebel Ali port into one of the world’s largest logistics company.
It owns six ports in Canada, the London Gateway container port, as well as P&O Ferries, which it acquired in 2019
On Thursday, Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs and a former White House counsel to Barack Obama, announced her resignation in the wake of emails showing a close relationship between her and Epstein.
Ruemmler, who had referred to the sex offender as “Uncle Jeffrey”, had repeatedly tried to distance herself from the emails and other correspondence that has been released and had said she would not resign.
