On November 4th, 2017, the gates of the Ritz-Carlton in the Saudi capital Riyadh closed as Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal's car swept past. Since then this immensely wealthy businessman, the owner of the George-V hotel in Paris and classified by Forbes as the 45th richest person in the world, has been detained in the five-star establishment, facing claims of corruption. Close to 300 people, including eleven princes, 38 ministers or deputy ministers, businessmen and civil servants fell into the same trap. “They received an invitation to meet the Crown Prince or the King, and once they arrived at the meeting place their chauffeurs were told to leave, and they were accompanied to the Ritz-Carlton,” recalls a businessman familiar with events.
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Reacting to these events, which had the appearance of a coup d'état, the French President Emmanuel Macron hastily rearranged his schedule to fly to Saudi Arabia and had an urgent two-hour meeting with the new Crown Prince, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, the man behind the detentions. The meeting ended with a diplomatic communiqué in which the French president welcomed the “openness” of the Saudi strongman's comments. But the meeting was chiefly about the fate of the Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri who had resigned while on a trip to Saudi Arabia and who had remained there, seemingly himself in detention. Following Macron's intervention the Lebanese premier was allowed to leave and arrived in Paris on November 18th.
But the Élysée is also very keen for the release of Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal, aged 62, who is the grandson of the first Saudi king Ibn Saud. In fact, as economy minister Emmanuel Macron had been involved from as early as 2014 in the negotiations with the prince aimed at setting up a Franco-Saudi investment fund. This finally came to fruition in 2016 under the guidance of CDC International Capital (CDC IC), a subsidiary of France's publicly-owned financial institution the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC).
Macron also met the Saudi dignitary at the Elysée at the start of September, in a meeting which did not feature in the French president's official diary. At the time the Saudi billionaire was overseeing the purchase of French bank Crédit Agricole's shares in a Saudi bank. Mediapart has also learnt that one of the prince's advisors – Kacy Grine – had supported Emmanuel Macron's election campaign, notably in the 'international working group' set up at the time by Macron's En Marche! movement.
The gates of the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh have already re-opened for some dignitaries who have acknowledged their guilt and paid “reimbursements” which, in a few cases, have been colossal. At the end of November Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, the deposed minister in charge of the National Guard, was released after paying a reported billion dollars. Two other sons of the late King Abdullah, Saisal and Meshaal bin Abdullah, left the hotel in December having reached undisclosed “financial settlements”.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Saudi authorities are demanding six billion dollars from Prince Al-Waleed in return for his freedom, or that he relinquishes his 81.3% shareholding - an equivalent value – in the powerful regional television group Rotana, whose audience is said to be of particular interest to Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Prince Al-Waleed is said to consider this an excessive price and is calling for an “appropriate investigation” into the corruption of which he is accused.
Following the claims made against the prince his group Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) – which is quoted on the stock exchange in Riyad – lost a fifth of its value. Forbes magazine has already downgraded his fortune by two billion dollars, estimating that it fell from 18.7 billion to 16.9 billion dollars in December.
It was in September, just weeks before the purge, that Prince Al-Waleed – who is also a shareholder in Twitter, the Four Seasons hotel chain, Euro Disney, Citigroup and the airline Flynas – decided his group would buy the 16.2% stake that French bank Crédit Agricole held in Banque Saudi Fransi. Since then Saudi Fransi's director Patrice Couvègne – a banker who has spent his entire career at Crédit Agricole – is also being held in Riyadh. When questioned about the anti-corruption operation in Saudi Arabia and the fate of the French executive, the Élysée said that these matters concerned “internal Saudi affairs or private deals”.
The French authorities decided in June 2014 to be partners with Al-Waleed in the creation of a joint French-Saudi investment fund. The prince, who had in earlier times been awarded the Légion d'Honneur by President Jacques Chirac, and was later decorated by President Nicolas Sarkozy, had been one of the sponsors behind the construction of exhibition rooms for the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre Museum, putting up 20 million euros. The department was inaugurated by President François Hollande in September 2012. After the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC) had signed a memorandum of understanding in Riyadh over the investment fund, there were numerous meetings at the Élysée where the prince was regularly received by President Hollande, with Emmanuel Macron in attendance (see photo below, at a dinner held in October 2014).
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“It was logical for Emmanuel Macron to be involved as minister of the economy in the setting up of the fund,” notes the Élysée, while pointing out that it was the French foreign ministry who were in charge of the issue. In June 2015 the Franco-Saudi Investment Fund (FISF) was set up, with the Kingdom group and CDC IC each planning to invest 50 million dollars, with the aim of eventually putting up 400 million dollars with the support of other investors from the Gulf.
During a presentation of the agreement (see video here) the then French foreign minister Laurent Fabius called the deal with the prince a “partnership of excellence”. The investment fund agreement was formalised in October 2015 after a visit to Saudi Arabia by then prime minister Manuel Valls who met Prince Al-Waleed, accompanied by minister Jean-Marie Le Guen and former culture minister Jack Lang. In parallel, a consortium of French companies – made up of the CDC, Aéroports de Paris, Axa, Eiffage, Engie, Eren Group, Orange, Safran and Suez Environnement – were called on to take a 150 million-dollar stake in Prince Al-Waleed's company which had just been floated on the new stock exchange in Riyadh.
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It was Lang, in his capacity as president of the Arab World Institute in Paris, who presented the medal of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres to Prince Al-Waleed in September 2016 in the presence of President Hollande. The Franco-Saudi fund has since established itself in Dubai under the name Five Capital Advisors. According to Jean-Marc Forneri, the boss of finance company Bucéphale Finance, and the banking advisor on the operation, the anti-corruption purge in Riyadh will not affect the fund's future. “If the Crown Prince says 'Kingdom Holding belongs to me” we'll change boss and that's it,” he told Mediapart. “For the companies it doesn't change anything.” On the other hand, if Kingdom's share price collapses there is no doubt that the companies will lose money.
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The Élysée says it has “regular contacts with Mr Al-Waleed” but no more than with “any other economic player of this importance”. The presidency said that Emmanuel Macron's encounter with the prince did not feature in the official presidential agenda because it was in fact formally a meeting between the Saudi and Alexis Kohler, the general secretary at the Élysée and de facto chief of staff. “The president simply looked in on the meeting and he spoke with the prince about the reforms taking place in Saudi Arabia,” the Élysée told Mediapart. According to the photos and videos of the meeting, the encounter between the two men was in fact very formal.
Next to the prince was his advisor Kacy Grine, a former employee at Bucéphale Finance and the architect of the Franco-Saudi fund who could not hide his pleasure at meeting Emmanuel Macron now he was president, having supported him as a a candidate. He makes this clear on his Instagram account (see below).
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Jean-Marc Forneri of Bucéphale confirmed Grine's support for Macron as a candidate and for his party. “When En Marche!'s diplomatic task team was seeking to understand what was happening in Saudi Arabia, it called on him,” Forneri told Mediapart. His work had been “very much appreciated”, the banker added. Other photographs posted on social media by Kacy Grine confirm this involvement, in particular those taken at En Marche!'s campaign headquarters.
When questioned by Mediapart about the political relationship of the prince's advisor with En Marche!, the Élysée gave no comment.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter