A boy walks on rubble of a house destroyed by recent airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition in Sanaa, Yemen, on Dec. 29, 2017. Picture by Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images. All rights reserved. While Thomas Friedman was taking Mohammad bin Salman’s claims about fighting corruption at face value, many were seeing extortion, and an abuse of power. Consider what follows, all of which also mysteriously escaped Friedman’s journalistic acumen:
In the summer of 2015, while vacationing in Southern France, MBS purchased, on a whim, one of the biggest and most expensive yachts in the world from Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler (who incidentally made his fortune selling vodka), after spotting it once in the bay. The deal was finalized right there without further waiting, for a staggering $500 million (twice the cost of the most expensive house in the United States, itself already the ultimate billionaires’ dreamland.) While indulging himself with such lavish luxury purchases, His Highness was pushing for and implementing economic reforms of the IMF type, meaning, drastic austerity measures, budget cuts, salary cuts, freezes of government contracts and so on and so forth, following the drop in oil prices which has since resulted in the KSA losing a stunning one third of its currency reserves in less than three years since 2014.
This itself would be enough to prove that MBS, supposedly a paragon of morality, moderation and integrity, a “wise king”, is one of those morally and politically corrupt rulers and “wealthiest 1%” (0.0001% in his case) for whom austerity, “necessary sacrifices”, and belt-tightening measures apply to others but never to oneself.
