Saudi Arabia’s wealth funds own planes used in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi

• The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, a huge fund for sovereign wealth, has large investments in many prominent US companies.
• Court documents show that the fund also owns aircraft used to carry out the 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
• Visit the Insider Business Department for more stories.

This article was published by Responsible Statecraft and Insider.

In the spring of 2018, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Wall Street and major universities rolled out a red carpet for nearly three weeks to welcome Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to the United States.

During his trip, MBS met with Oprah Winfrey, Rupert Murdoch, Sergey Brin, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, among others. The New York Times described the US tour as “changing the perception of Saudi Arabia from an opaque and conservative kingdom, where mosques promote extremist ideology and women are relegated to second-class status, to a modernist desert oasis.”

But while MBS faced this effort, it was a huge fund for sovereign wealth – the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, or PIF – with about $ 400 billion in assets and which was expected to grow to $ 2 trillion, for many of the techniques. elite, finance and entertainment, who want to seek photos and meetings with the 32-year-old heir to the Saudi throne.

Six months later, two planes owned by the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund flew a team of assassins from Riyadh to Istanbul, where they killed Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate. The planes then flew the death squad back to Saudi Arabia.

At least one of the planes was in the US in October.

Saudi Embassy

The role of PIF assets in the assassination was revealed in court documents filed in Canada as part of a case for embezzlement by a number of Saudi state enterprises against Saad Aljabri, a former top Saudi intelligence official, who is currently in exile and earlier in a case filed in the DC District Court, it is alleged that shortly after Khashoggi’s assassination, MBS tried to send a murder squad to kill him.

Canadian court documents, first reported by CNN and later acquired and reviewed by Responsible Statecraft and Insider, reveal that Sky Prime Aviation was transferred to PIF on December 22, 2017. Two Gulfstream jets owned by Sky Prime Aviation transported Khashoggi’s assassins to and from Istanbul. less than one year after the transfer of Sky Prime Aviation to PIF.

“TOP SECRET NOT FOR CIRCULATION AND VERY URGENT” is at the top of the document outlining the transfer of a group of companies, including Sky Prime Aviation, to the PIF.

The document states:

“On the instructions of His Highness, Crown Prince, Chairman of the Supreme Committee on Public Corruption, to transfer ownership of all companies referred to in my aforementioned letter to the ownership of the Public Investment Fund, approve the completion of the necessary procedures for this. ‘

“Given the crown prince’s central role in controlling Saudi Arabia’s assets and the government writing large, an international independent investigation must be conducted to determine which state assets were used in this gruesome assassination,” Kate Kizer said. policy director of advocacy group Win Without War.

The release of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s report last week, which concluded that MBS had approved the operation to “capture or kill” Khashoggi, led to the implementation of the sanctions imposed by the Magnitsky law against a former Saudi intelligence chief and members of the group. who took part in the murder.

In the end, the Biden government chose not to punish MBS directly or otherwise, despite the ODNI’s ruling that it approves the operation that led to Khashoggi’s death.

Associated Press / Virginia Mayo

“This is a violation of Biden’s campaign promise to hold Khashoggi’s killers accountable,” said Michael Eisner, general counsel for Democracy in the Arab World Now, a group founded by Khashoggi shortly before his assassination.

“We now know who ordered the murder, and he will not have the same consequences as his infantry,” Eisner said. “It is contrary to a basic principle of justice that the person ordering a murder should not receive less punishment than the infantry who carried it out.”

The Magnitsky Act could have far-reaching consequences.

The Department of Treasury describes it as implemented “in recognition that the prevalence of human rights abuses and corruption, which is wholly or to a large extent outside the United States, has reached such an extent and seriousness that it has stabilized internationally. political and economic systems. ‘

“The United States seeks to impose tangible and significant consequences on those who commit serious human rights abuses or commit corruption, as well as to protect the United States financial system from abuse by the same persons,” the Treasury said.

“The Biden government must impose US sanctions and travel bans on senior executives at the PIF based on the use of PIF aircraft to move the Saudi assassins of Jamal Khashoggi between Saudi Arabia and Turkey,” said Sunjeev Bery, executive director of the advocacy group Freedom, said. Forward. “It is ridiculous that the PIF, on the one hand, is providing travel support for Khashoggi’s assassins while at the same time doing business with Uber and other companies in Silicon Valley.”

Associated Press

Although the role of PIF assets was not mentioned in the ODNI report or the sanctions announcement, MBS’s role as chairman of PIF and the use of PIF assets – the two Gulfstream radiators – raise questions about the fund’s involvement in the assassination and the knowledge of other PIF executives about the operation to kidnap or kill Khashoggi.

PIF did not respond to a request for comment on the role its planes played in the killing and on what, if any, knowledge or involvement PIF had in approving or managing the flights to Istanbul.

PIF’s status as an investor with a very good court undoubtedly generates significant incentives for authorities to keep the discussion of the fund’s role in the murder as quiet as possible. Funds like PIF can buy shares in any listed company, and two weeks ago PIF increased its investment in US equities to nearly $ 12.8 billion. The fund has a $ 1.38 billion stake in Activision Blizzard, $ 3.7 billion in Uber, $ 1.06 billion in Electronic Arts, $ 923 million in Live Nation and $ 1.1 billion in Carnival Cruise Lines.

Sky Prime Aviation, in turn, has taken measures to restrict publicly accessible data on the continuing flight activities of the aircraft used during the operation that killed Khashoggi. But just like MBS and the PIF, it appears that their operations in the US continue without any significant restrictions or consequences arising from the murder.

RadarBox, a flight data tracking system, shows one of the Gulfstream jets used to fly the kill team to Turkey in 2018, which recently flew in the US within late last year. On October 13, the Gulfstream IV with tail number HZ-SK1 leaves Boston and flies to Fort Lauderdale and arrives there in the late afternoon. It was the same plane that transported the second group of killers from Riyadh to Istanbul.