Out-of-Favor Saudi Prince Bought Cypriot Passport
A senior member of the Saudi royal family and government
adviser arranged citizenship for himself and six family members through Cyprus’
controversial “Golden Visa” program.
Prince Saud bin Abdulmohsen bin Abdulaziz Al Saud applied
for a passport shortly after his uncle, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, ousted him
as emir of Ha’il province in 2017. Under its economic citizenship program,
Cyprus gives out passports in exchange for minimum investments of two million
euros.
Since 2013, Cyprus has sold passports to approximately 4,000
foreign nationals, raising more than seven billion euros, according to a recent
report by anti-corruption NGO Global Witness.
The European Union has criticized the Golden Visa program
for letting people pay their way into the bloc with inadequate vetting and
little transparency. The Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering agency,
Moneyval, has called Cyprus’s program “inherently vulnerable to abuse.”
Cyprus grants citizenship to almost anyone who has a clean
criminal record and big money to invest. Between January 2013 and August 2019,
only 56 of 2,700 applicants were rejected, according to official data cited by
the news website Kathimerini. A single application can cover multiple people.
The Mediterranean island added a condition in 2019 banning
public officeholders or people under sanction by other governments, but that
came well after Saud’s application.
A December 2017 Interior Ministry document said the ministry was “favorably disposed” toward the prince’s application and
would present it to the Cypriot Council of Ministers for a decision.
Cyprus does not publish the names of those who hold Golden
Visas, but a government spokesman indicated that Saud’s application had been
approved.
Cypriot government spokesman Kyriacos Kousios declined to
comment in detail, citing confidentiality reasons. However, he said, “all the
procedures, criteria and checks have been followed thoroughly prior to the
approval of the aforementioned application, with the active involvement of all
the competent ministries and authorities, as well as the Interpol and Europol.”
Saudi Arabia, ruled by the House of Saud since 1932, is
known for its fabulous oil wealth and its authoritarian regime. The country is
ranked ninth lowest in the world on the Economist Democracy Index for depriving
citizens of basic political and civil liberties.
Saud, born in 1948, is a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founder,
King Abdulaziz Al Saud, and a nephew of the current King Salman. He attended
Britain’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and has had a long political career
as a core member of the royal family.
In 1976, he was appointed deputy director of Mecca, the most
important of the Kingdom’s thirteen provinces, and later became the de-facto
governor, or emir. From 1999 onward, he was emir of Ha’il province, the
Kingdom’s agricultural heartland and one of its most conservative provinces.
He is a member of the Allegiance Council, a group created by
King Abdullah in 2007 to let each branch of the Al Saud family vote on matters
of succession.
Around that time, Saud opened the door of his palace in
Ha’il to a BBC camera crew, which captured the opulence he surrounded himself
with. The 2008 BBC program showed him having a family barbecue in the desert;
carrying out his daily duties at the governor’s court; attending male-only
political discussions; and practicing falconry.
During an interview segment, he was asked about the
Kingdom’s strict adherence to sharia law, which many human rights advocates
such as Amnesty International and UN member states consider harsh and
discriminatory.
“I think public executions are part of our religion, it’s
accepted by the majority of the people, it’s not done in secret, it’s done in
public and it’s announced on TV and on the radio,” he told the BBC. “We have no
apologies. The aspect of chopping hands [of convicted thieves], this is
governed by so much, it’s regulated so much to the point where it’s practically
impossible to be done. … I’ve been working in the government for 37 years, I
haven’t seen one yet.”
“That doesn’t mean, by the way, that we are apologizing
about that,’’ he added. “We believe in our Quran, why can’t people get that?”
At the time, Saudi Arabia was trying to project the image of
a country striving to modernize while maintaining its traditions and beliefs.
“We change based on the same pace as our people,’’ he said.
“You can only change people as much as people want to be changed. …We do not
want to be Westernized.”
Following the death of King Abdullah in 2015, King Salman
ascended the throne and appointed his son Mohammed bin Salman — often referred
to as MBS — as Minister of Defense.
From this powerful position, MBS started shaking things up,
leading Saudi troops into an offensive in Yemen and seeking outside help to
overhaul the country’s oil-dependent economy. His efforts have been unpopular
within the House of Saud.
In April 2017, Saud was removed as emir of Ha’il and
appointed adviser to the royal court, which is usually a retirement position of
limited importance, said Steffen Hertog, an associate professor of politics at
the London School of Economics who studies the Middle East and Gulf states.
Two months later, MBS was named crown prince.
Discontent escalated in late 2017, when the Ritz Carlton
Hotel in Riyadh became an opulent prison for hundreds of business and political
elites who were swept up in an anti-corruption probe. Many had to surrender
fortunes to win their release.
The crackdown “served the centralization of power in
economic matters, bringing princes with business interests and merchant elite
in line — and cracking down on some of their corruption,’’ Hertog said.
Saud secured a Cypriot immigration permit — a requirement
before applying for citizenship — in July 2017, a month after MBS became crown
prince. In December, he applied for a passport for himself and a wife, Princess
Hala bint Abdullah A. Al Alsheikh, and five of his 10 children:
Princess Aljowhara bint Saud bin Abdulmohsen bin Abdulaziz
Al Saud, born 1978
Princess Nourah bint Saud bin Abdulmohsen bin Abdulaziz Al
Saud, born 1973
Prince Abdulmohsen Saud bin Abdulmohsen bin Abdulaziz Al
Saud, born 1985
Prince Badr bin Saud bin Abdulmohsen Al Saud, born 1981
Prince Faisal bin Saud bin Abulmohsen Abdulaziz Al Saud,
born 1977
To satisfy the visa investment requirement, Saud and his
family ordered the construction of two villas, according to the leaked
document.
The investment was to be made through two companies, Romolo
Ltd and Casipa Ltd, registered in December 2016 with Cypriot lawyer Christos
Patsalides as sole shareholder via two proxy companies. Patsalides did not
respond to a request for comment.
Another of Saud’s children, Prince Abdulaziz, was appointed
director of Romolo and Casipa as well as one of Patsalides’ proxy companies,
Sagita Ltd, in January 2018. Abdulaziz was not listed in the 2017 Golden Visa
application.
The timing of Saud’s move to gain foreign citizenship
suggests he may have been unnerved by the new crown prince, Hertog said.
“Many are afraid of MBS within the royal family due to his
draconian nature,” Hertog said.
Changes in the Kingdom may prove difficult for some royals,
said Cinzia Bianco, a researcher and analyst at the European Council of Foreign
Relations who specializes in the Arabian peninsula.
“The crown prince’s ascent has long polarized the large
Saudi royal family,’’ Bianco said. “Its ‘old guard’ includes senior members of
the family who are highly skeptical of the current trajectory, disruptive as it
is of decades-old traditions in all fields.,”
That disruption, coupled with plunging oil prices, has
prompted Saudi businessmen to move wealth out of the country and seek second
passports. Cyprus and Malta have been the most popular destinations.
In Saudi Arabia, dual citizenship must be personally
authorized by the king. Failing to get his approval can result in the loss of
native citizenship, seizure of assets, and expulsion from the Kingdom.
“That a senior member of the royal family may have had the
king’s permission to purchase a foreign passport sounds unlikely,” Hertog said.
The Saudi government did not respond to an OCCRP request
seeking comment.
Though several high-profile citizens have sought and
obtained citizenship, Saud and his family are the only Saudi royals who have
been publicly identified.
In 2015, Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz, a son of deceased Saudi
banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, was given a Cypriot passport, along with 36 family
members. In 2017, two Saudi families reportedly acquired 62 passports in Malta.
That year Saudi nationals reportedly accounted for 17 percent of new Maltese
citizens.
Patsalides, the lawyer who incorporated the companies used
by Saud to buy the Cypriot villas, also represents bin Mahfouz. OCCRP has
identified 17 companies registered in Cyprus in which both Patsalides and bin
Mahfouz serve as directors.
Cyprus’ Ministry of Interior submitted Saud’s application to
the Council of Ministers for approval and also notified the parliament just
days before Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades made an official visit to
Saudi Arabia in January 2018 — the first by a sitting president of Cyprus.
The meeting included the signing of many bilateral
agreements, such as a memorandum of understanding regarding political
consultations between Ministries of Foreign Affairs.
Unlike other countries, Cyprus does not seem to shy away
from maintaining a friendly relationship with Saudi Arabia.
The Kingdom was widely condemned when it stepped up
arbitrary prosecution of peaceful dissidents and activists in 2018, and faced
international criticism after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in
the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Crown Prince Mohammed is accused of having
ordered the killing, which he denies.
In September 2019, then Foreign Minister Ibrahim bin
Abdulaziz Al-Assaf became the first Saudi official to visit Cyprus. In January
2020, Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides was received by King
Salman in Riyadh.
“The past months have seen an unprecedented level of
diplomatic engagement between Saudi Arabia and Cyprus,’’ Bianco said. “To
meaningfully explain the interest in the region, one has to look beyond the
borders of both, towards Turkey, and factor in energy, security, foreign
policy, and trade.”
Cyprus’ location as a gateway to Europe and its history with
Turkey create a complex geopolitical situation that seems to play a part in its
diplomacy with Saudi Arabia, Bianco said.
“While Saudi Arabia supports Cypriot sovereignty against the
impingement of Turkey, which is the only country that recognizes the breakaway
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Cyprus could provide the Saudis an
opportunity to improve their relations with the European Union as a whole,” she
said.
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