Elizabeth Bower, Benjamin McCallen and Joseph Baio

A team from Willkie Farr & Gallagher led by litigation partners Joseph Baio, Elizabeth Bower and Benjamin McCallen succeeded in pausing a $10 billion suit against George Soros and the Open Society Foundation.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan of the Southern District of New York stayed the suit pending the resolution of a foreign arbitration.

The plaintiffs, represented by Louis Solomon and Michael Lazaroff of Greenberg Traurig, sued Soros in June on behalf of Guinea-based BSG Resources.

The 67-page complaint pulls no punches.

“Soros is a racketeer billionaire who acts in utter disregard of the rule of law and the rights of others,” Solomon wrote.

The plaintiffs claim Soros “used his enormous financial clout and influence through his network of organizations to delay, damage, and destroy an investment worth at least $5 billion that plaintiffs lawfully held to mine some of the world's most valuable deposits of iron ore located in the Simandou mountain range in the African nation of Guinea.”

And they accuse him of “fraud, illegality, defamation, bribery, and criminal misconduct.”

The dispute centers on what happened after Guinea's 2010 presidential election, when the candidate Soros supported won. Afterwards, Soros and the new president, Alpha Condé, held a joint press conference where they announced that all existing mining contracts in Guinea would be “re-examined” and a new mining code would be enacted.

Ultimately, the plaintiffs' mining rights were revoked. To date, Guinea has not compensated them for their $800 million investment.

But BSG Resources has already challenged Guinea's conduct before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in an arbitration proceeding currently pending in Paris.

That was enough for Keenan to stay the case.

“Defendants have established that the same key issues underlie Plaintiffs' allegations in the Arbitration and the claims in this action,” he ruled. “Judicial economy weighs in favor of a stay to allow for resolution of these underlying issues and to avoid inconsistent results.”

The Willkie team also included associates James Fitzmaurice, Elizabeth Dunn, Gabrielle Antonello and Marcus Haggard.