Behind the Kingdom's Veil by Susanne Koelbl

Author:Susanne Koelbl [Koelbl, Susanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642503456
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2020-07-22T15:00:52+00:00

The royals’ depiction of the unification wars: The nation’s founder, Ibn Saud, was considered an honest, humble man.

Direct descendants receive a fixed allowance from birth. It ranges between $200,000 and $270,000 per month for his children. Grandchildren get $27,000, great-grandchildren $13,000, while their children get a piddling $8,000. When princes and princesses marry, they are given between one and three million dollars for the construction of a residence. The portfolio of the royal allowances adds up to two billion dollars, a little less than 1 percent of the country’s annual budget of around $240 billion.

In 1996, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal spilled the beans about the top-secret list of royal allowances in a confidential conversation with William Fowler, the former US ambassador in Riyadh. Fowler cabled a memo on the subject to his superior. Fifteen years later, WikiLeaks published the confidential State Department correspondence—as part of the Cablegate documents—for all the world to read.

Fowler’s report revealed further details about the royals’ internal rivalries—for example, how a handful of princes in top government jobs received much more money than the rest. Huge sums are allocated outside of the official budget, flowing toward, for example, development projects around the two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina, which, as Prince Al-Waleed revealed, amounted to $5 billion per year at the time.

That’s not all. Of the national daily oil production of eight million barrels, one million barrels were set aside, the proceeds from the sale of which were divided up between five or six princes, as Al-Waleed told the US ambassador. In the mid-1990s, that amounted to $20 million per day.

Saudi Arabia didn’t always have a reputation for corruption. The nation’s founder, Ibn Saud, was considered an honest, humble man who led a puritanical life following Wahhabi principles. It was well known that, when he was traveling through the country and saw a poor man, he would sometimes stop, get out of the car, and press a gold coin into the man’s hand. Ibn Saud died in 1953. “King Saud—who succeeded Ibn Saud on the throne—and his brother King Faisal—who in turn succeeded him—are also reported to have been squeaky clean.”

Back then, the nation was developing quickly, and the oil boom demanded rapid change. King Faisal—who took the throne in 1964—founded various institutions to run the country: a defense ministry, an interior ministry, a health ministry. He left the job of running the ministries to his brothers.

But the oil boom encouraged greed: day-to-day corruption on the part of hospital directors, construction bosses, and top state officials who would buy hospital beds, heavy machinery, and office equipment at normal market rates then charge the administration sky-high prices for the goods and pocket the difference. For a long time, this was the way things worked here. Everyone in the hierarchy added his signature to claim his share of the contract.

Princes used to seize plots of land and register them under their names. They either took the land away from the residents outright, or they bought it for

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