Word: sultans
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...local depositors, who held a total of $400 million in the bank. The outraged victims of the shutdown, who included Indian and Pakistani families and some 30 municipalities, stood to receive just 75% of their money, up to a maximum of about $25,000. But Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi who acquired control of B.C.C.I. for $1 billion last year, was still fuming because the clampdown shuttered the bank without warning just as he was planning to restructure it. "He will do nothing unless there is incredible political pressure that he simply cannot resist...
...fiscally prudent government would have acknowledged the emergency and waived the agency rules, says Abdulaziz Sultan al-Issa, chairman of the Gulf Bank. "But that would mean cutting people out of the moneymaking loop, and our rulers are scrupulous about allowing such windfalls. It is part of the elaborate way in which our loyalty is bought...
...would be possible if the government had adopted a novel reconstruction plan drafted during the Iraqi occupation. A small group of Kuwaiti technocrats had proposed creating a Kuwaiti-run corporation to oversee the postwar rebuilding. "For years we have sought to expand beyond our oil base," explains Fawzi al-Sultan, a Kuwaiti who serves as an executive director at the World Bank in Washington. "By taking charge of the reconstruction effort ourselves, we would have cut costs and developed an expertise we could have then marketed worldwide. But the politics was wrong. Agencies and other forms of patronage would have...
...reasonable compensation policy for goods lost during the occupation has aided stagnation as well. Most businessmen are also waiting to see whether the Emir will trump his consumer-debt order by similarly forgiving commercial loans. "Now we have Saad's idiotic statement about Saddam," says the Gulf Bank's Sultan. "Where is business confidence to come from? Who from the outside will invest here if our leaders are trembling? And what interest rates will we have to pay when the government borrows in the international markets if Kuwait is deemed a security risk? Nothing Saad could have said would have...
...more than a year after seeing a Price Waterhouse audit that raised serious questions about B.C.C.I.'s viability before seizing its 25 branches in Britain. One explanation: the Bank of England was conducting extended negotiations with Abu Dhabi authorities, apparently hoping that B.C.C.I.'s current owner, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, would shore up the bank. But more suspicious experts raise questions about B.C.C.I.'s links to Western intelligence agencies. Leaders in Parliament have expressed outrage at the regulatory failure, which among other things has endangered deposits from as many as 45 municipalities and four utilities...