Jordan’s King Abdullah kept secret Swiss bank accounts to hide vast wealth

The king of Jordan, Abdullah II, has for years kept massive bank accounts in Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank known for providing secrecy for high-end clients, during a period in which his country has suffered through economic and political turmoil, according to a Monday report.

King Abdullah was in possession of at least six accounts with the bank, including one that at one point was worth 230 million Swiss francs ($251 million), while his wife maintained another account. Some of the accounts date from as far back as 2011, The Guardian reported.

Lawyers for King Abdullah II and Queen Rania asserted that their clients had abided by every relevant tax law, that there had been no wrongdoing by the couple, and that most of the wealth in the bank accounts had been inherited from King Abdullah II’s father, according to the report.

Jordan’s economy, while strong compared to those of many other Middle Eastern countries, has been negatively impacted by COVID-19, contracting by 1.6% during 2020, according to the World Bank. Abdullah, meanwhile, has been dogged by allegations of corruption in recent years.

Through the release of the Panama Papers, it was revealed that he had secretly purchased 14 luxury homes at an estimated total value of $106 million in the United States and United Kingdom between 2003 and 2017, through front companies.

According to a report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, attorneys and advisers to Abdullah worked extensively to conceal his real estate holdings, including establishing multiple shell companies and working through entities in Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands. The investigation found Abdullah owned at least 36 secret shell companies in tax havens.

The Guardian report said that Jordanian intelligence worked relentlessly to quash publication of information related to King Abdullah II’s finances, threatening and intimidating local media outlets.

Jordan has been criticized for lapsing into increased authoritarianism in recent years. The US advocacy group Freedom House, which monitors democracy and human rights across the world, downgraded the kingdom from “partly free” to “not free” last year.

The royal family was embroiled in a struggle last year, after King Abdullah II’s half-brother Prime Hamza was accused of sedition and of conspiring to destabilize the country. Hamza was placed on house arrest but was never formally charged.

The recent revelation about Abdullah come after several news outlets reported on a data leak from Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, which revealed details of the accounts of more than 30,000 clients and pointed to possible failures of due diligence in checks on many customers.

Credit Suisse said in a statement that it “strongly rejects the allegations and insinuations about the bank’s purported business practices.”

The German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung said it received the data anonymously through a secure digital mailbox over a year ago. It said it’s unclear whether the source was an individual or a group, and the newspaper didn’t make any payment or promises.

 The newspaper said it evaluated the data, which ranged from the 1940s until well into the last decade, along with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and dozens of media partners including The New York Times and The Guardian.

It said the data points to the bank having accepted “corrupt autocrats, suspected war criminals and human traffickers, drug dealers and other criminals” as customers.

Credit Suisse said the allegations are “predominantly historical” and that “the accounts of these matters are based on partial, inaccurate, or selective information taken out of context, resulting in tendentious interpretations of the bank’s business conduct.”