An Irish hotelier, Qatari royals and a federal lawsuit involving a Beverly Hills hotel

As Irish hotelier Patrick McKillen tells it, he met the former emir of Qatar on a yacht in Doha to discuss a business opportunity in California, more than 8,000 miles away.

McKillen and Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani were discussing the purchase of a Beverly Hills hotel, which McKillen said he committed to managing and redeveloping.

Now that hotel — the Maybourne Beverly Hills — is at the center of a civil racketeering complaint filed in the Central District of California on Tuesday, in which McKillen accuses Qatari royals of orchestrating “a global scheme” to defraud him and his company of hundreds of millions of dollars for work completed on several luxury properties.

In the lawsuit, McKillen, who reportedly co-owns a whiskey…