The Saudi
“anti-corruption” crackdown led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), pictured below, which initially netted
11 princes and a few dozen ministers and former ministers, has caught up with
hundreds of businessmen, who are being detained in the luxurious Ritz Carlton
and other hotels in Riyadh. MbS
is targeting an astonishing $800 BILLION in assets believed to be held in 1,700
frozen bank accounts.
Your Watchman believes MbS will top off his coup by
having himself crowned King. Al-Arabiya, the
Saudi-owned pan-Arab television news channel, posted on Twitter on
November 8th that the abdication may be imminent but then deleted the
post. How will this play out further?
Not even the key players probably know. But it is entirely possible – in the midst of feuding in
the royal family – that the entire Saudi Monarchy could be overthrown and
replaced by a military junta much as happened in Egypt in 1952, when King Faruq
was overthrown and replaced by military leaders Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel
Nasser pictured above.
Saudi authorities have questioned 208 people in an “anti-corruption”
investigation and estimate
at least $100 billion has been stolen through graft, a top official said
on Thursday as the inquiry expanded beyond the kingdom’s borders.
“Based
on our investigations over the past three years, we estimate that at least $100
billion has been misused through systematic corruption and embezzlement over
several decades,” Attorney-General Sheikh Saud al-Mojeb said in a statement.
Anti-corruption authorities
have also frozen the bank accounts of CIA backed, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef,
one of the most senior members of the House of Saud, and some of his immediate
family members. Nayef had been appointed as Crown Prince in 2015 and was first
in line to the throne until he was replaced by MBS in June. He is a nephew of
King Salman and grandson of the founding monarch King Abdulaziz.
The investigation has spread to the neighboring United Arab
Emirates, as the UAE
central bank has asked commercial banks and finance companies there to provide
details of the accounts of 19 Saudis.
The UAE, particularly Dubai, is one of the main places where
wealthy Saudis park their money abroad.
In addition to bank accounts, they buy luxury apartments and villas in Dubai
and invest in the emirate’s volatile stock market.
Some wealthy Saudi individuals have
been liquidating assets within Saudi Arabia, the UAE and
other Gulf countries this week, apparently in an effort to move money out of
the region and escape the crackdown, private bankers and fund managers said.
In Riyadh, rich individual investors have been selling equities
heavily, although buying by state-linked funds has helped to support the
market. In Dubai, shares in real estate developers have sunk as investors worry
about the impact on the property market of a pull-out by Saudis.
The UAE commercial bankers said they had not been asked to
freeze the Saudi accounts at their
institutions, but they believed the central bank’s request for information
might be a prelude to such action.
The risk of the accounts being frozen “jeopardizes Dubai’s pitch
as a private banking center”, said a Gulf-based banker, adding: “Banks in the
UAE are full of Saudi money.”
One senior banker at an international bank with business in Saudi Arabia
said his institution had already frozen some accounts, both inside the kingdom
and outside it, in response to Saudi government requests.
The
bank is conducting its own investigations into accounts linked to people who
have been detained, the banker said without elaborating.
Another banker in the region said his institution was receiving
more inquiries from Saudi clients about
cross-border financial transactions, but it was handling the inquiries with
extreme caution as there could be further action by regulators.
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