Word: saud
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Forgive yourself if you didn't know that Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud spent six days in Washington last week. Apart from Beltway commuters who encountered his 50-car motorcade and a handful of Foggy Bottom specialists, few noticed that Saudi Arabia's virtual ruler had come and gone. The low-profile trip generated scarcely a headline, the way the cautious Saudis prefer it. But this was no ordinary visit. It was the third leg of a monthlong coming-out tour of major world capitals to deliver an important if understated message: after three years of uncertainty...
Abdullah is best known at home as a prince of the desert, who has a good handshake, speaks in velvety tones and can be aloof one minute and chuckling the next. Closely resembling the famed founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdul Aziz (generally known as Ibn Saud), he is fond of camel racing and is tolerant toward human frailties. "He will forgive anything but lying," says an intimate. He has a reputation for eschewing the country's endemic corruption; almost alone in the royal household, he forbids his sons to use their connections to profit in business. A devout...
Nobody would think the worse of him if Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud joined the selling stampede. The tumbling value of Citicorp alone has cost him, as the banking company's largest shareholder, $640 million by the time the clock strikes noon on Wall Street. But to Alwaleed the only question is: At which precise moment should he strike? He and his advisers have spent six months studying 40 companies. Now prices are becoming more of a bargain by the second. So many stocks, so little time. Alwaleed sits elbows up at a cockpit-style desk...
...Prince's ultrarich uncles, the eldest sons of Ibn Saud, who rule Saudi Arabia today, have accumulated their wealth mainly by diverting huge sums, directly or indirectly, from the government's extravagant oil revenues. As a Riyadh businessman puts it, Alwaleed's branch of the Saud family tree has always been considered a little smoother and a little straighter than the rest. His father Talal, a former Ambassador to France, was one of the "free princes" who demanded democratization and went into temporary exile during the troubled 1953-64 reign of King Saud. Alwaleed's mother, Princess Mona...
Perhaps the clearest sign of Alwaleed's growing influence is that he is attracting serious enemies, including some of his powerful al Saud cousins. "There is jealousy, even hatred," says a Saudi source. "It bothers people that he came from almost nowhere and--zoom!--now he's way up here." Rumors have circulated that he is a front man for others, especially in the Citibank deal. Alwaleed and Western diplomats in Riyadh dismiss them as unfounded. He seems determined to let his influence grow, no matter the consequences. "I have nothing to hide," he says. "I've made $12 billion...