Commentary: The Hidden Dangers of Saudi Arabia’s Trillion-Dollar Investment Fund

Last week, business luminaries from around the United States arrived in Miami for the Saudi Arabian government's Future Investment Initiative (FII) Summit, hoping to secure a slice of its trillion-dollar Public Investment Fund (PIF) for their own companies.

While businesses had shunned Saudi Arabia following the shocking 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi government has succeeded in rehabilitating its image, its path smoothed by the PIF's free-wheeling investments and deals. But like all things cheap and easy, they come with serious risks and consequences that responsible businesses should carefully consider.

Saudi Arabia has undergone an undeniably remarkable transformation since the ascendancy of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who also has the title of "prime minister" (in a country with no elected parliament). Under his leadership, the government has launched massive development projects, finally allowed women the right to drive, abolished the mandatory hijab and much of the sex segregation in public places, and culturally liberalized, with movie theaters, concerts, sporting events, and other once verboten activities.

Human rights have not fared as well. Soon after his father, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, became King in 2015, MBS launched a catastrophic war in Yemen with the ostensible goal of pushing the Houthis out of power. The war killed nearly 400,000 Yemenis and subjected millions to starvation conditions owing to years of Saudi Arabia's indiscriminate bombardment and siege, blocking even fuel, food, and medicine to the impoverished nation. While the bombs have stopped falling under a fragile truce, Yemen remains in shambles, and the Houthis remain in power, with zero accountability for MBS for his war crimes.

Domestically, social liberalization has not eased the political tyranny of MBS's absolute dictatorship. Power is more centralized than ever, thanks to his decimation of the country's independent power bases in the royal family and business and religious establishments. Soon after coming to power, MBS arrested and imprisoned nearly 400 of the country's business leaders in Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton hotel, retrofitted as a temporary prison, forcing them to relinquish their assets to the PIF, and torturing and even killing those who held out.

At the same time, he jailed dozens of writers, journalists, and women's rights advocates urging human rights reforms in the country with shocking sentences of between ten and 45 years for those found to have tweeted a critical opinion. The government subjected activists and critics to arbitrary travel bans; some are still unable to leave the country. While the government has released a handful of prisoners in the past month, far too many remain jailed.

While the PIF's assets belong to Saudi citizens in theory, they are under the complete control of its chairman (you guessed it), MBS, with no independent oversight or accountability. MBS has even overruled its board and advisory panel when they dared to object to an investment. The crown prince has used the PIF as his personal kitty for consolidating control and power, utilizing its wealth to whitewash the country's human rights record and exert influence with U.S. government leaders.

This includes the $2 billion he invested in Jared Kushner's private equity firm Affinity Partners just months after Trump left the White House, $1 billion for former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, hundreds of millions of dollars in various Trump businesses, and unknown millions to hire former U.S. government and defense officials who now serve not our nation, but the Kingdom. Even Miami mayor Francis Suarez has his fingers in the pie, promoting PIF business for his law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, while putting Miami and his mayoral authority at the service of the Saudi extravaganza this past week.

As the PIF's investments in the U.S. expanded, including its secret creation of LIV Golf and attempted takeover of PGA Tours, the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations held hearings in 2023 and 2024 into the national security risks of the Saudi government's steady acquisitions in critical U.S. industries, not just in gaming, sports, film, and fashion, but also banking, defense, finance, technology, agriculture, oil, and water.

The PIF's governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan declined to testify before the committee until compelled to do so by a Senate subpoena, while the CEOs of U.S. agents for Saudi Arabia, including Teneo, McKinsey & Company, M. Klein & Co., and Boston Consulting Group, refused to submit to the subpoenas, claiming that they were afraid that MBS would jail them in Saudi Arabia if they revealed their contract details with the PIF.

Less known is the PIF's own role in the torture and murder of Saudis, including Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who fled the country in 2017 and became a critic of the regime, publishing his opinions in the Washington Post and founding my organization, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). MBS used PIF's airplanes (from a fleet he'd confiscated from a Saudi business owner, Salem Almuzaini, who remains unjustly imprisoned) to ferry his henchmen to Istanbul, where they kidnapped, tortured, and murdered Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate and then flew home on the very same planes. The crime captured global attention and put MBS in the public's doghouse, but not for long.

As the Biden administration mended frayed ties with MBS, so too did the U.S. business community, burying the hatchet of MBS's misdeeds as it sought to cash in on the PIF's lucre. But businesses would be wise to leave the handle sticking out. They should consider the risks of doing business in an absolute monarchy ruled by a sadistic sociopath with the power to confiscate anyone's assets in Saudi Arabia, any time. Businesses must also comply with their responsibilities under the United Nations' Guidelines for Business and Human Rights, starting with due diligence — learning about the Saudi government's human rights abuses — and ensuring that they do not contribute to, or benefit from such abuses.

While the temptation of the PIF cash cow may be hard to resist, each business has an ethical and fiscal duty to scrub beneath the surface and take a hard look at a business partner like the PIF, lest they find themselves financing new crimes or enjoying a private stay at the Ritz-Carlton, if under lock and key. American businesses must do their part to make clear that our economy, institutions, and government are not for sale.

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