ARAB PETRO SWF
ESTB 12 25 SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND
THIS IS --> GENERIC ARAB MONEY
SEE ARAB TAG
SEE NEPOTISM // ROYALTY MONARCHY
SEE KUSHNER TRUMP KIDS CNN HOSTILE TAKEOVER SKYDANCE
SEE PRESS SUPPRESS
see FOREIGN POLICY US WITKOFF BIBI?
SEE CRYPTO
cop 30 11 25 2nd big tent vs china
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Sovereign wealth funds are state-owned investment funds that invest in various assets, and in the context of Jared Kushner, he has secured significant investments from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). These investments have raised ethical questions due to Kushner's previous role as a senior advisor to former President Trump and his close ties with Middle Eastern leaders like MBS and UAE's Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ).
WikipediaOverview of Sovereign Wealth Funds and Key Figures
What is a Sovereign Wealth Fund?
A sovereign wealth fund (SWF) is a state-owned investment fund that invests in various assets, including stocks, bonds, real estate, and private equity. These funds are typically financed by revenues from commodity exports or foreign exchange reserves.
Key Figures Involved
| Name | Title/Position | Country | Notable Actions/Connections |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) | Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia | Saudi Arabia | Invested $2 billion in Jared Kushner's firm, Affinity Partners. |
| Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) | President of the United Arab Emirates | United Arab Emirates | Key player in Middle Eastern diplomacy and investments. |
| Jared Kushner | Former Senior Advisor to Donald Trump | United States | Secured significant investments from Saudi Arabia post-White House. |
Jared Kushner's Business Ventures
- Affinity Partners: Kushner's private equity firm, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) shortly after he left the White House.
- Investment Concerns: The investment raised ethical questions due to Kushner's previous role in the Trump administration and his close ties with MBS.
Recent Developments
- Kushner has been involved in high-profile negotiations and investments, including a recent $55 billion bid for Electronic Arts in partnership with Saudi Arabia's PIF and other investors.
- His relationships with Middle Eastern leaders have been pivotal in securing funding and shaping diplomatic efforts in the region.
This information highlights the intricate connections between sovereign wealth funds, key political figures, and business ventures in the Middle East.
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kush looking for another 5 bill$
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no lnx
Trump's son-in-law has a $5 billion problem
:{Jared Kushner applauds during U.S. President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 24, 2026.
Thom Hartmann March 20, 2026
There are several clear winners from Trump’s attack on Iran:
— Russia, who can again fund its violence against Ukraine with new oil revenue and now claims its unprovoked attack on that nation is consistent with this new Trump Doctrine;
— Saudi Arabia, which has long hated Iran and lobbied since at least 2008 for the US to attack that country;
— the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has similarly pushed America to attack Iran since at least 2010;
— the American defense weapons industry, which is making additional billions;
— Don Jr. and Eric, who have taken a big position in a drone-manufacturing business, getting them in on the Pentagon gravy train;
— Donald Trump himself, who’s succeeded in largely pushing Epstein off the front page;
— and Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s called for American strikes against Iran since 1992 and will stay out of prison as long as the war continues.
The losers include:
— The credibility of the United States and the rule of international law;
— the families of 13 dead and 140 injured American soldiers and airmen,
— the families of at least 160 dead Iranian little girls and thousands of other dead civilians in a dozen countries,
— American taxpayers who’re paying for the bombs;
— and future prospects for world peace.
But the biggest winner may be Jared Kushner, who apparently pushed Trump to initiate the war while he’s trying to solicit $5 billion from the same Arab states that have been begging American administrations for decades to attack Iran.
Back on March 5th, I speculated here on Hartmann Report that Kushner and Witkoff had been negotiating with Iran in bad faith, possibly to get the Iranian leadership to meet together in one place so Netanyahu (who used to sleep in Kushner’s bedroom) could kill them all with a missile strike.
Three years earlier, I laid out the backstory of how Kushner allegedly helped MBS take over the Saudi kingdom and was richly rewarded with $2 billion to fund his new investment venture.
Now, The New York Times is reporting that Kushner is back at the Arab trough, trying to pick up an additional $5 billion for his company from the same states that have been begging America to attack Iran for decades.
This represents a massive and apparently corrupt conflict of interest, as Congressman Jamie Raskin and Senator Ron Wyden pointed out when they called for an investigation into Kushner acting as an unregistered foreign agent in violation of the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. They wrote:
“This revelation is deeply disturbing, as Mr. Kushner appears to be influencing U.S. foreign policy by acting as a political consultant to the Saudi government while also accepting their money. … Mr. Kushner’s proximity to President Trump and the potential for political interference warrants the appointment of a Special Counsel.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, in a brilliant imitation of Vladimir Putin, is threatening news organizations for their reporting on the War. He seems upset about news stories that Trump may have ignored warnings from his top generals that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz if we attacked them; those reports appear to be well-sourced.
And it appears it was Kushner who was one of the main cheerleaders for this war, risks to world oil supplies and the possibility of the conflict igniting WWIII be damned.
Trump himself said that Kushner had advised him that Iran was preparing to strike America, something that’s patently impossible; they don’t have any missiles capable of reaching the United States and had just offered to sign a new deal promising never to develop any. Nonetheless, Trump — in an eerie echo of Bush’s lies about Iranian WMD — told America:
“Within a week, [Iran was] going to attack us, 100 percent. They were ready. They had all these missiles, far more than anyone thought, and they were going to attack us.”
Did I mention that Kushner is asking the Saudis and Emiratis for another $5 billion? As Popular Information reported:
“Kushner’s largest investor is the Saudi Arabian government, which provided Kushner with $2 billion in funding in 2021. Each year, Saudi Arabia pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, $25 million, as a ‘management fee.’ Meaning he has received in excess of $100 million from the Saudi government over the last few years.
“Notably, ‘Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump’ in February, advocating a U.S. attack,’ according to reporting in the Washington Post. Trump’s comments reveal that Kushner used his role in Geneva to push Trump toward the outcome favored by his biggest client. Affinity Partners also received more than $200 million from the UAE. According to CNN, behind the scenes, the UAE was also lobbying Trump to strike Iran.”
Never before in American history have US negotiators had massive personal financial stakes in the outcome of their own negotiations. It’s a clear violation of the Constitution’s and US law’s ban on foreign emoluments, and possibly numerous anti-bribery laws.
With Congress paralyzed by terrified, spineless Republicans refusing to even look into the possibility that billionaire Trump, billionaire Kushner, billionaire Witkoff, and billionaires in the Middle East have thrown America into war just to enrich themselves, the burden has fallen on the American press.
Which has produced the predictable squeals from Carr and the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News” propaganda channel, and from Whiskey Pete Hegseth, giggling about how things are going to change when David Ellison takes over CNN.
Threats notwithstanding, our elected officials need to step up now to defend both the First Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, and the lives of our men and women in uniform.
Even lacking subpoena power, Democratic leadership should convene shadow hearings to investigate this possible double-dealing that’s already killed Americans and threatens to plunge the entire world into flames.
At the very least, they should spend a few weeks holding public, on‑the‑record hearings into whether this Iran war is being steered from Riyadh, Jerusalem, and Kushner’s investment firm instead of the Pentagon.
With their Benghazi spectacle that followed the death of four Americans, Republicans taught us that when our officers and enlisted people die abroad, Congress has a duty to drag every decision‑maker before the cameras; Democrats should apply that same standard now, and ask under oath whether Trump, Kushner, and their billionaire partners are profiting from a war they helped ignite.
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Apr. 11, 2026,
By Matt Gertz
Fox News programs that fixated on the international business interests of Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden’s son, are utterly uninterested in the voluminous conflicts of interest between President Donald Trump and his family members and the Persian Gulf states affected by his strategically disastrous war of choice against Iran.
The president, his eldest sons, Don Jr. and Eric, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are enmeshed in a sprawling set of business deals in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar. Those deals often involve members of the royal families of those states or the entities they control.
But since just before the beginning of the year, as Trump’s saber-rattling led to U.S. military deployments and became the war launched by American and Israeli forces on Feb. 28, through April 8, Fox’s evening programs that air from 5 p.m. to midnight ET have referenced such Trump family conflicts of interest only twice — both of which were passing mentions, and neither of which came during a discussion of the Iran conflict — according to a Media Matters review of the Nexis transcript database.
No substantive evidence ever emerged that Joe Biden profited from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
Many of the network’s highest-rated hosts carried out a yearslong obsession with what Fox host Sean Hannity described as the “Biden Crime Family,” mentioning Biden’s son at least 13,440 times over a period of less than 16 months of Biden’s presidency. Their feverish conspiracy theory postulated that Hunter Biden had served as a “bag man” for his father, soaking up money funneled from foreign entities and kicking a share back to Joe Biden, who would then use his elected office to help his son’s business partners.
No substantive evidence ever emerged that Joe Biden profited from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. The dealings in question largely occurred when Joe Biden was a private citizen, and the primary instance the conspiracy theorists have cited as evidence of him taking state action on behalf of one of his son’s clients — that he, as vice president, pushed for the removal of Ukraine’s top prosecutor in order to benefit one of his son’s clients — was manifestly bogus.
But Trump and his family members appear to have adopted influence-dealing on a dramatically larger scale than the Biden family was ever accused of. And the Trumps’ sprawling set of business deals with Gulf state royals and the sovereign wealth funds they control cannot be disentangled from the president’s decision-making in launching and continuing a war of choice against Iran.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE reportedly urged Trump to launch the war against Iran, and both states reportedly pressed the U.S. to protect them by escalating the conflict “until Iran is decisively defeated.” Qatar, meanwhile, traditionally serves as the regional intermediary between the Iranian regime and Western governments, and has pushed for negotiations.
Play
Former MAGA allies push back on Trump as Iran war fractures the rightMarch 25, 2026 / 10:27
Those states aren’t just U.S. allies whose views must be weighed by American leaders — their leaders have spent the past few years enriching the president’s family.
In perhaps the most noxious of the myriad entanglements, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — an Abu Dhabi prince known as the “spy sheikh” for his leadership of the UAE’s intelligence service — secretly agreed to buy a huge stake in a crypto company partially owned by the president and his family, paying $500 million in what The Wall Street Journal described as a “hugely profitable” deal for its founders.
The dealing is so egregious that it even raised eyebrows in Trump-friendly circles. “You know what the difference is between the Biden family business and the Trump family business?” Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy asked in a February piece for National Review. “You’d have to add two digits to the sum of Biden abuses of power, foreign entanglements, and corruption alleged in the report to get near what Trump has raked in just from the UAE.”
But that’s just one of numerous business deals in the Gulf involving the president’s family.
The network’s evening programs have mentioned the Trump family’s myriad Gulf state conflicts just twice since late last year.
The Trump Organization, which the president owns and Eric and Don Jr. oversee, is partnering with a developer who has ties to the Saudi government on a series of Trump-branded real estate projects in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Oman — including a $7 billion development deal financed by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, whose board of directors is headed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Kushner’s private equity fund received a $2 billion investment from the Saudi PIF — reportedly forced through by bin Salman over the board’s objection — as well as $200 million from the UAE.
The Qatari royal family gave Trump a $400 million “super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet” to serve as Air Force One.
The Associated Press reports that Powerus, a Florida-based drone manufacturer partly owned by Don Jr. and Eric, is reportedly “trying to sell” defensive drone interceptors “to Gulf countries while they are under attack by Iran and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father.” (Powerus co-founder Brett Velicovich told the AP that the company “is doing many demos across the Middle East right now” but did not name the specific countries.)
In December 2024, Eric said of potential conflicts of interest, “I have no interaction with Washington, D.C. I want no interaction with Washington, D.C.” Don Jr. denied trading on his father’s name in a May 2025 statement to The New York Times, saying, “It’s laughable that the left-wing media thinks that I should lock myself in a padded room while my father is president and cease doing what I’ve been doing for over 25 years to earn a living and provide for my five children.” In an October 2025 CBS News interview alongside Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff, Kushner brushed off ethical concerns, saying, “What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world.” And in November 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied the president and his family are compromised by business interests, insisting it is “frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit.”
For Fox News, their word is apparently sufficient. The network’s evening programs have mentioned the Trump family’s myriad Gulf state conflicts just twice since late last year.
In the first instance, Jessica Tarlov, the Democratic co-host of the panel show “The Five,” raised the issue of “Donald Trump and his family, their corruption” while discussing the president’s poor polling performance during a Feb. 10 segment about the midterm elections.
“This story [Fox contributor] Andy McCarthy is doing a series for the National Review on it,” she said. “All the crypto money that they’re taking in from the [United Arab Emirates] and others is a really big deal.”
Play
Fox News pushing Trump’s Iran war agenda, while support for the war plummetsMarch 25, 2026 / 10:27
The only other Fox News mention of the Trump family’s conflicts of interest in the Gulf that our study found came during a segment on Trump’s planned presidential library-hotel that aired on the network’s flagship, ostensibly straight news broadcast, “Special Report.”
“Guests will be welcomed into the lobby by Air Force One, presumably the Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar,” Fox correspondent Aishah Hasnie said during the March 31 news package.
When an interviewer asked “Special Report” anchor Bret Baier last year if the news media should provide the business dealings of Trump’s sons with the same scrutiny they gave those of Hunter Biden, he replied, “100%.”
“If you’re going to play it one way, you’ve got to play it another way and you’ve got to cover all of those things,” he said.
But that’s not how things have played out on Baier’s network, even with the alleged corruption far more direct, the sums vastly larger and the potential consequences far more dire.
Matt Gertz
Matt Gertz is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive research center that monitors the U.S. media. His work focuses on the relationship between Fox News and the Republican Party, media ethics and news coverage of politics and elections.
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President Donald Trump's profits from the presidency continue to grow, and so do the funds flowing to his friends and family.
NBC News Miami walked through some of the recent updates on Trump World's profits, which are scoring billions.
“I don’t think there’s any line right now between policy decisions and political calculations and the interest of the Trump family,” said presidential historian Julian Zelizer, from Princeton University.
Trump's conflicts of interest aren't new; they were a concern even before he entered the White House in 2017, when he said he would put his businesses into a "blind trust." It never happened, and he claimed that he knew nothing about the Trump Organization, as his sons were running the business. Indeed, they managed to negotiate
The White House and the Trump Organization claim there are no ethical issues. When Donald Trump Jr. was asked about profits from failed cryptocurrency during a conference, he complained, "Frankly, it’s gotten old."
However, during the first term, the Trump Org. wasn't doing deals in foreign countries. There were minor deals like trademarks in China and shortly after the first term, two Trump advisors were given billions by the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF): Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and Trump's former Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin.
In the first year of the second term, the Trump Org. has made deals all over the Middle East, including eight agreements, but not directly with foreign governments.
"But governments in authoritarian and one-party states rarely take a hands-off approach — especially when the business belongs to a sitting president," the report said.
That's particularly the case for the Saudis. Currently, a real estate tycoon with close ties to the royal family is developing a project. It will be a “Trump Plaza” resort on the Red Sea.
In Qatar, for example, Trump not only scored a multi-million-dollar plane that taxpayers retrofitted for him, but a Trump golf club and villa project is currently under development. The company that is part of the operation is owned by the Qatari government. The same thing is happening in Vietnam, where the *New York Times*reported the government took land from farmers to build a Trump resort. The report said that the government violated its own laws to do it. The country’s deputy prime minister signed off on the Trump Org. deal in a ceremony, the AP reported.
Meanwhile, what the countries got in return came from the United States. Qatar got U.S. technology, Vietnam got tariff relief and Saudi Arabia scored fighter jets.
The Trump Organization reinforced that none of its deals are done with foreign governments. The claim is that it is a coincidence that after deals were done in those countries, the government got something it needed.
A year after a deal was struck, it was exposed by the *Wall Street Journal* in January. Before the inauguration, a company linked to the UAE government, run by a member of the royal family, bought $500 million in crypto from Trump's "World Liberty Financial."
Then, another UAE company invested in Binance, an offshore cryptocurrency exchange, with $2 billion in digital currency called stablecoin, which came from the Trumps' World Liberty Financial.
"That allowed the Trump company that received the dollars to put it in safe investments such as bonds or money market funds and keep the tens of millions of dollars in interest for itself," the report said.
Suddenly, the new Trump government reversed restrictions on the UAE's access to U.S. chips. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao got a pardon from Trump, even though he'd pleaded guilty. He maintains that there was no connection between the Trump deals and his pardon.
World Liberty also denies any conflicts of interest.
It's only a portion of the cryptocurrency deals, the report said.
The White House alleged that any suggestion that the moves weren't "ethically sound" is either "ill-informed or malicious." It also falsely claimed that Trump's assets are in a trust managed by his children. While Trump pledged to have a blind trust in 2017, it never happened, a Common Cause investigation showed. In the new administration, Trump put about $4 billion in shares of his media company into a trust. There is no "blind trust" in the new administration either. There is, however, a revocable trust, that covers all of Trump's assets and is run by Donald Trump Jr.
The arguments from the White House "are belied by Trump’s failure to limit the appearance or reality that he is using his power to reward people who help enrich him," said *Mother Jones* in a March report. "Trump continues to benefit from the family companies now run by his sons, and ethics experts note that because Trump has not set up a blind trust, the president can keep track of who is paying or investing in those firms in hopes of influencing him."
NBC said that the Trump Organization claims it is “fully compliant with all applicable ethics and conflicts of interest laws” and added, “the implication that politics has enriched the Trump family is unfounded."
Trump, in January, told *The New York Times* that when it comes to potential conflicts of interest, “I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it. I didn’t have to do that. And it’s really unfair to them."
He added, "I found out that nobody cared, and I’m allowed to."
In January 2026, the Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of Trump voters were confident in his ethics. That said, in January 2025, that number was 55 percent. So, he's fallen 13 percent in a year, NBC cited.
In that same year, Forbes estimates Trump has increased his net worth by 60 percent, to $6.3 billion. Before he entered the White House, the Trump Organization was struggling, the report said.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. started a private club in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. There is a $500,000 "initiation fee." NBC compared it to the Yellowstone Club in Montana. In that case, members get access to multiple resorts, 50 ski trails and more than a dozen restaurants across an area the size of Manhattan. Don Jr.'s club is in a basement and is called the "Executive Branch."
"Meanwhile, as the two oldest brothers’ new drone company" is asking for Pentagon contracts and other government deals that would ensure the Trump's score taxpayer dollars for their companies. There are already companies with government contracts that one or both of the Trump sons have an ownership stake in. It includes a rocket motor maker, an AI chip supplyer and data analytics company, government records show, according to NBC.
When asked about the potential conflicts of interest, a spokesperson for Don Jr. said he doesn't "interface" with the government on companies in his portfolio. He complained that he shouldn't have to stop "living his life and making a living to provide for his five kids just because his dad is president." He said it "is, quite frankly, a laughable and ridiculous standard."
The report closed by saying, "A new investment firm that the brothers joined as advisers last year has raised $345 million in an initial public offering to buy stakes in U.S. companies designed to help their father revive America’s manufacturing base. After the AP asked Trump’s chief business lawyer about language in a regulatory filing stating the firm would target companies seeking federal grants, tax credits and government contracts, he filed a new document with that language removed."
Commenting on it, the Princeton historian, Zelizer, said that he thinks future presidents will be more restrained or be forced to be more restrained.
“[Trump] has shown politically there is no price to be paid to making money,” he said. “You know you can go there.”
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On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared that he will “be involved” in the federal government’s decision on whether to allow the streaming service Netflix to buy mass media and entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery. On Monday, Paramount Skydance, another mass media and entertainment conglomerate, announced a hostile takeover bid for WBD — with news soon following that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm is part of the Paramount offer.
“Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case,” Axios reported. “Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.”
Axios added that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, “was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.”
Fortune reported that “Affinity and the other outside financing partners have agreed to forgo any governance rights, which Paramount said means the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would have no jurisdiction over the transaction.”
But Axios’ Sarah Fischer wrote on social media: “Ask yourself, why would anyone want to put money into an investment of this caliber and have no governance rights or board seats?”
“Essentially,” she added, “people want to have control/access/political power behind the scenes.”
“Reality is,” Fischer explained, this hostile takeover is a good explanation “of how capitalism/democracy can be exploited for political gain,” with “Paramount essentially betting our open system incentivizes shareholders to take [the] best financial deal even if it means giving soft power” to three sovereign wealth funds, the President, and his son-in-law.
Critics are blasting Kushner’s and Trump’s involvement.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) remarked, “Donald Trump said he’ll ‘be involved in’ deciding if Netflix can buy Warner Bros. Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”
Award-winning journalist Sophia A. Nelson, responding to trump’s remarks, observed: “This is ridiculous. Corrupt. And NOT what a President gets involved in.”
Professor, investor, and marketing executive Adam Cochran wrote: “Trump is talking about him personally being involved in deciding the fate of the Netflix-Warner Brothers deal, and how it’s ‘bad.’ Meanwhile his son-in-law is financing the competing offer. There has truly never been a more corrupt administration in US history!”
Alexander Vindman, former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “F– NO to another corrupt Trump deal. Nepobaby, Jared’s, involvement would deliver CNN to MAGA.”
NewsNation’s Kurt Bardella, a communications advisor and media relations consultant, asked: “Alexa, what is a ‘conflict-of-interest’?”
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HRW
:{Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (center) heads a meeting of the Council of Economic Affairs and Development in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on May 29, 2018. The council is responsible for oversight of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF).
Investors and businesses looking to cash in on Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth and economic diversification plans should be wary of its Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) ultimate decision maker – the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The crown prince has consolidated unprecedented state economic power under his sole decision-making through the PIF, with few, if any, constraints on how he deploys his nation’s wealth, our research has found.
This mercurial autocrat effectively has singular, unfettered control of what may soon be the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. And while the Saudis haven’t had any international scandals lately — the crown prince hasn’t ordered any journalists dismembered or locked up princes in the Ritz until they turned over their businesses in at least a few years — there is immense risk in the crown prince’s personalized control over nearly a trillion dollars in Saudi sovereign wealth.
For decades, Human Rights Watch has documented how a centrally controlled revenue stream, such as oil, can exacerbate a ruler’s worst abuses and misrule by providing the financial resources for enrichment without accountability and transparency. Poor economic decision-making, mismanagement, corruption and human rights abuses thrive. There is no more consequential example than Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Mohammed bin Salman uses the fund to pursue his interests, with few, if any, guardrails. The crown prince is the chairman of the PIF’s board of directors; and he chairs the body that oversees the board, the Council on Economic and Development Affairs. He is also the country’s prime minister, which grants him the authority to appoint all board members with no oversight. His is the only name needed on the PIF’s organizational chart.
The crown prince’s authority over the PIF is mirrored by a broader consolidation of his power over the country’s political and security institutions.
Major PIF investments have involved unilateral decision-making by the crown prince, despite protests from the board of directors and professional advisers. The crown prince has circumvented governance procedures and gone straight to the king when the board opposes his decision. But that may rarely happen because many board members were appointed to their current positions after King Salman succeeded to the throne and his son assumed increasing power; and many are close personal confidants of Mohammed bin Salman.
Some of his decisions are questionable. In early 2020, the crown prince wanted the PIF to buy specific stocks as the markets plummeted during the onset of the global pandemic. In an interview, Yasir al-Rumayyan, the PIF’s governor, said that the board of directors voted against the move because it was seen as too risky but that the crown prince “took the matter to the King” who issued a decree, allowing the crown prince to bypass the PIF’s governance framework.
We have also documented rights abuses directly tied to the PIF, raising serious concerns for investors with any possible links to abuses in Saudi Arabia. Documents show that in 2017, one of Mohammed bin Salman’s advisers ordered al-Rumayyan, then the Fund’s supervisor, to transfer 20 companies that were captured as part of the “anti-corruption campaign” directly into the Fund. There is a risk that these companies were seized from their owners without due process.
The documents also indicated that one of the companies transferred to the PIF was Sky Prime Aviation, a charter jet company that owned the two planes used in 2018 by Saudi agents to travel to Istanbul, where they murdered Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was critical of the Saudi government.
Given that there are few if any domestic checks and balances on the crown price’s decision-making power over the PIF, money managers and executives need to make sure that they carry out their own extensive, thorough, and independent human rights due diligence and other protections before engaging in any business activities with the PIF. Ultimately, firms should refrain from doing business with the PIF if they conclude that serious adverse rights impacts are unavoidable.
//
November 20, 2024 Report
The Man Who Bought The World
Rights Abuses Linked to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Its Chairman, Mohammed bin Salman
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Human Rights Watch
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Nov 12, 2024The rise of Middle East sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) has been one of the most transformational trends in asset management. Regional SWFs are forecast to manage close to $8 trillion by 2030, a near doubling from last year's asset level, according to industry specialist Global SWF.
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Mar 23, 2025RIYADH: Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and five of its regional counterparts are on track to control $18 trillion in assets by 2030, marking a 50 percent surge from the end of 2024 ...
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https://inforcapital.com › investors › sovereign-wealth-funds-in-the-middle-east
Sovereign Wealth Funds in the Middle East
The Public Investment Fund (PIF) is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, established in 1971 to invest on behalf of the government and support strategic national projects. As one of the largest sovereign wealth funds globally, PIF plays a central role in Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, aiming to diversify the economy away from oil dependence and foster sustainable growth.PIF is chaired by ...
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
2025 Insights | Sovereign Wealth Funds and Liberalized Rules Are ...
Key Points Sovereign-related investors, more commonly referred to as sovereign wealth funds, have increasingly made the Middle East a global center of wealth and investment. Gulf SWFs, no longer just passive investors, are taking an active role in big-ticket, controlling-stake M&A transactions outside the
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