By Phil MILLER

In early December 2010, with the Middle East on the cusp of revolution, the Queen of England’s second son, Prince Andrew, went for a walk in New York’s Central Park. With him was Jeffrey Epstein, the U.S.  billionaire and convicted paedophile, who committed suicide in prison in 2019.

When a photo of their meeting emerged in 2011, it engulfed Andrew in a scandal which forced him to give up his prestigious role as an official U.K.  trade envoy by July of that year.

Yet, for much of the last decade since losing that role, he continued to represent Britain and its royal family in the highly controversial Gulf region. Andrew participated in 70 meetings with Middle Eastern monarchies notorious for repressing their own people in the wake of the Arab Spring of 2011, research by Declassified has found.

As recently as September 2019, Andrew met the new Saudi ambassador to the U.K., Prince Khalid bin Bandar, at Buckingham Palace, a year after the regime had used its diplomatic network to dismember Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

It was Andrew’s notorious interview about Epstein with BBC Newsnight in November 2019 that forced him to “step back from public duties for the foreseeable future,” putting a stop to his quasi-diplomatic meetings with Middle East monarchies, including an imminent trip to Bahrain.

While there has been media scrutiny of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein, less reported is that he retained a key role in British foreign policy long after a former U.K. official publicly raised concerns in 2010 about his “boorish” behavior in Bahrain and reputation among diplomats as “His Buffoon Highness.”

Andrew’s Arab Spring

In March 2011, with uprisings under way in most of the region’s eight monarchies and doubts building over his personal conduct, Andrew postponed a planned trip to Saudi Arabia to promote arms sales in his role as a trade envoy.

Buckingham Palace had to defend his suitability for the job, saying:

“Middle East potentates like meeting princes. He comes in as the son of the Queen and that opens doors. He can raise problems with a crown prince and we later discover that the difficulties have been overcome and the contract can be signed.”

The Arab Spring and the Epstein photo provoked scrutiny of Andrew from two flanks, with revelations he had entertained the son-in-law of Tunisian dictator Zine ben Ali at Buckingham Palace shortly before the North African regime fell.

Yet, Andrew was determined to maintain relations with Arab autocrats, visiting Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain at his residence in London one evening in mid-April 2011.

Bahrain’s security forces, supported by neighboring Saudi Arabia using British-made military equipment, had just crushed massive pro-democracy protests, killing more than 40 people.

Although able to meet Andrew in private, the crackdown generated so much international controversy that Salman had to decline an invitation to attend Prince William’s wedding later that month. Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the invite from Buckingham Palace had displayed “shocking insensitivity to the suffering of people who have been persecuted.”

Bahraini protesters shot by military, Feb. 18, 2011. (Shaffeem, video screenshot, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

In July 2011, Andrew also succumbed to pressure and said he was standing down from his trade envoy role. Despite the announcement, little changed, with government ministers allowing him to honor “a number of pre-existing overseas diary commitments” until the end of the year.

These included a rescheduled trip to Saudi Arabia plus sessions in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Palace accounts show his flights for those trips cost the public purse £95,000, with the Foreign Office and trade ministry covering his accommodation and other expenses.

For the Saudi trip, he was accompanied by his aide, a former director of the Conservative Middle East Council, Laura Hutchings, who the Telegraph called “one of David Cameron’s most glamorous lieutenants.”

The pair landed at Dhahran military airbase, in Saudi Arabia’s eastern province where 160 members of the Shia minority had been arrested for staging Arab Spring protests. Andrew met Saudi oil executives in Al Khobar along with Saudi ministers and four princes, including Prince Al Waleed Al Talal, whom Timemagazine dubbed the “Arabian Warren Buffett” due to his enormous wealth. Al Waleed owns the Savoy Hotel in London.

By delaying the trip until after the peak of the Arab Spring protests, Andrew avoided significant controversy, although he was meeting officials from a regime which continued to suppress almost any dissent, not just domestically but also in a neighboring state.

Two months later, in November 2011, Andrew landed in Qatar for a week of meetings with other Gulf royals and business figures, accompanied by his aides Hutchings and Major-General Richard Sykes, a former British army officer.

Andrew met four Qatari royals, including the Central Bank governor, the trade minister, the prime minister and his deputy. In addition, he attended a reception given by the Anglo-Dutch energy company Shell, which owns huge gas fields in Qatar.

He then proceeded to the UAE for a visit lasting four days, giving him time to have lunch with Sheikh Suroor bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, a senior Emirati royal and owner of the Abu Dhabi trade center. On Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011, Prince Andrew met the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), at his Bateen Palace.

That same day, a court sentenced five UAE political activists to up to three years in prison for charges that included insulting the country’s leadership. Among those convicted were the prominent blogger Ahmed Mansour and Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith, an economics professor from Sorbonne University in Paris.

Although they received a presidential pardon the day after their conviction, both men would continue to be harassed and heavily surveilled.

To round off the year, Andrew met the king of Bahrain at the luxurious Four Seasons hotel in London in mid-December. By then, the leaders of Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement had been sentenced to life imprisonment by a military court, and 559 Bahrainis were accusing the regime of torturing them.

Supporting the Saudis

After meeting four of the region’s eight monarchies during 2011, Andrew continued to play a prominent role in maintaining British relations with these regimes, even if he was no longer a formal U.K.  business envoy.

In 2012, the government’s trade department praised Andrew in its annual report, explaining that,

“The Duke continues to be a strong supporter of British business and may still undertake overseas visits on behalf of this cause in the same way as other members of the Royal Family do.”

The only difference was that from April 2012, the trade department no longer held “a specific budget” to fund Andrew’s work. It said:

“In future, the associated costs of official overseas travel by The Duke will be met by the FCO [Foreign Office] in the same way as for other members of the Royal Family.”

Over the next few years, the Foreign Office would send Andrew on official tours of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, with flights costing the public at least £122,000. He also held dozens of other meetings with Middle Eastern monarchies in the U.K.  and on trips abroad with his Pitch@Palace scheme for young entrepreneurs, which were supported by British diplomatic and military assets.

The afternoon session of #pitchatpalace 11.0 Boot Camp gets started with a welcome from @TheDukeOfYork – who founded Pitch@Palace in 2014.

The 42 Entrepreneurs will now Pitch their Businesses for 3 minutes in front of today’s Audience of Business, Technology & Academia. pic.twitter.com/RSEnVn5zNH

— Pitch@Palace (@pitchatpalace) May 8, 2019

Andrew flew to Jeddah in mid-June 2012 shortly after the death of Crown Prince Nayef, to present “condolences to the Saudi Royal Family” – one of the U.K. ’s closest allies in the Gulf. Nayef had served as interior minister since 1975, making him responsible for decades of crackdowns in Saudi Arabia, including the kingdom’s response to the Arab Spring protests the year before his death.

Despite the controversy surrounding Andrew’s personal life, he was greeted in Saudi Arabia by the U.K.  ambassador and when he returned home the next day, Foreign Secretary William Hague went to meet him at Buckingham Palace in the afternoon.

Two years later, in November 2014, Andrew returned to Saudi Arabia at the behest of the Foreign Office, with flights costing taxpayers £43,000. By that time the human rights situation in the country had deteriorated, with the regime increasing the sentence on liberal blogger Raif Badawi from 600 to 1,000 lashes and sentencing leading Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr to death on Oct. 15.

During his trip, Andrew called upon the deputy crown prince, Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the former head of Saudi intelligence during the Arab Spring. He also visited the Saudi stock exchange with the British ambassador and retained access to U.K.  diplomatic offices such as the ambassador’s residency and the consulate in Jeddah.

The month after his Saudi trip, in December 2014, Andrew’s reputation suffered a further blow when court filings in Florida showed a U.S.  woman, Virginia Roberts, had alleged the Prince had sex with her when she was a minor during his friendship with Epstein.

The allegation did not go away, but Andrew continued to participate in U.K.  diplomacy with Saudi Arabia. In March 2018, he joined a major Foreign Office public relations drive to welcome Saudi Arabia’s new Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), to London and portray him as a moderniser.

The Duke of York joined his mother and MBS for lunch at Buckingham Palace, followed by a private meeting with MBS at the Saudi ambassador’s residence in London.

Later that year, Andrew received the Saudi ambassador, Prince Mohammed bin Nawwaf, at Buckingham Palace on  Sept. 25. A week on, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed and cut up in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in retaliation for his criticism of MBS.

However, Andrew said he wanted to expand his Pitch@Palace scheme into Saudi Arabia, sparking criticism from Amnesty International and others. Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle told The Independent: “Prince Andrew’s open call for doing business with a man who has just ordered the murder and dismemberment of a journalist hits a new low, even for him.”

The following year, in September 2019, Andrew welcomed the new Saudi ambassador, Prince Khalid bin Bandar, to Buckingham Palace, in what appeared to be his last official meeting with a Gulf monarchy.

Boosting Bahrain

While Andrew played a notable role in maintaining ties between the House of Windsor and the House of Saud, it is in Bahrain where his presence has been most significant since the Arab Spring.

Together with his mother, he has attended the Royal Windsor Horse Show seven times since 2013, and routinely sat with Bahrain’s King Hamad.

In January 2014, he flew to Bahrain where he was received upon arrival by Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad Al Khalifa, King Hamad’s second son. Both Andrew and Sheikh Abdullah have ties to controversial celebrities. Sheikh Abdullah had a “close personal relationship” with Michael Jackson, paying millions of dollars for the singer to live in Bahrain after his acquittal on child molestation charges in the U.S.  in 2005.

Andrew met Sheikh Abdullah three times during his 2014 visit to Bahrain, including at an airshow where British arms companies and aircraft were exhibiting. The event coincided with ”GREAT British week”, which marked 200 years of U.K. -Bahrain relations.

Although Andrew was no longer a U.K.  trade envoy, the week was explicitly intended to boost British commercial opportunities in the Gulf and he “attended a Luncheon for the Bahrain-British Business Forum at the Radisson Diplomat Hotel”.

While in Bahrain, Andrew also met King Hamad and Crown Prince Salman, and visited the Royal Navy’s minesweeper base.

A week before Andrew’s arrival, Bahraini police had fatally shot 19-year-old driver Fadhel Abbas Muslim Marhoon. Bahrain’s police said he was shot from the front in self-defence, but evidence obtained by Human Rights Watch suggests he was shot in the back of the head.

The Duke of York returned to Bahrain in April 2018, when he inaugurated a new U.K.  naval base and an academic course in “security science” for Bahraini police officers. The course is provided by Huddersfield University, of which Prince Andrew was then the chancellor.

The course is taught in Bahrain at the Royal Academy of Police’s campus, adjacent to a maximum security prison where the leaders of the country’s pro-democracy movement are serving life sentences.

According to the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), inmates have been taken from the prison to the police academy and subjected to interrogation and torture.

During his 2018 trip, Prince Andrew again met King Hamad and other leading members of the royal family including Bahrain’s interior minister, Lieutenant-General Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa.

BIRD’s director, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, has said it “sickened” him to see Prince Andrew “jovially greeting” the interior minister, given his department’s track record of systematic torture.

Andrew returned to Bahrain in March 2019 for another visit to the naval base, dinner with King Hamad and a session with Sheikh Abdullah. He then met King Hamad again in May at the Royal Windsor Horse Show.

Throughout Andrew’s engagement with Bahrain’s ruling family since the Arab Spring, the human rights situation in the country has severely worsened with most of the opposition in jail or having fled overseas.

Admiring the Emirates

Another Gulf monarchy with whom Andrew has helped deepen British relations since the Arab Spring is the UAE. Andrew is a long-term friend of Abu Dhabi’s ruler Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), joining him on hunting trips in Africa, according to a leaked U.S.  embassy cable from 2003.

In April 2013 Andrew helped host a state visit from MBZ’s older brother, UAE President Sheikh Khalifa, an absolute ruler and graduate of Britain’s Sandhurst military academy. Andrew attended the state luncheon that was held for the Emiratis at Windsor Castle, which also featured Prime Minister David Cameron, Foreign Secretary William Hague, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Vince Cable.

Other attendees included Sir Roger Carr, who would soon become the chairman of BAE Systems, Sir John Sawers, then head of MI6, General David Richards, the Chief of the Defence Staff, and Andrew Brown, an executive director of Shell.

The next day, Prince Andrew played a more exclusive role, throwing a lunch for his parents and Sheikh Khalifa at Buckingham Palace.

Later he accompanied Sheikh Khalifa to Westminster Abbey, after the Emirati president had met Cameron in Downing Street to discuss “building a deeper and substantive defence partnership and significant new commercial links”.

The UAE state visit came at a time when Whitehall was trying to secure arms sales for British companies worth billions, during increased repression in the Emirates.

From March to July 2013, the UAE held a mass trial of 94 activists accused of ties to al-Islah, a movement associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocated political reform in the country. Some 69 of the men were later convicted of attempting to overthrow the government, with sentences of up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

By March 2017, Emirati authorities had stepped up their persecution of Sorbonne lecturer Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith, sentencing him to 10 years in prison for posting material online “intended to harm the reputation and stature of the state”.

This crackdown did not appear to put Andrew off his friendship with the UAE ruling family, and in October 2017 he visited MBZ at his Sea Palace in Abu Dhabi, next door to a naval headquarters.

Although his trip to Abu Dhabi was part of his Pitch@Palace scheme, he was able to attend a reception in his honor onboard a Royal Navy vessel where the British ambassador highlighted business opportunities for Emirati investors in the U.K. . Andrew was pictured onboard wearing a naval uniform, displaying his rank as a vice-admiral.

Meanwhile, the UAE’s navy had taken on a major role in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, using its relatively powerful fleet to enforce a maritime blockade which has prevented humanitarian aid from reaching millions in need.

Opportunities in Oman

Among Andrew’s numerous honorary roles, he is a patron of the Omani British Friendship Association(OBFA), along with the current sultan of Oman, Sayyid Haitham bin Tariq Al Said. Another senior figure in the association is the U.K.  ambassador to Oman, a sign of its important diplomatic and political function.

The group explicitly promotes U.K.  business in Oman, highlighting its “pro-enterprise laws” and “liberal investor-friendly policies” such as zero income tax. A tweet from the British embassy in Oman in 2018 confirmed Andrew’s attendance at one event as a “guest of honour.”

.@TheDukeOfYork addressed an Omani British Friendship Association and #Oman British Business Council Reception in London on 12 July hosted by @BritOmani with HH Sayyid Haitham bin Tariq Al Said and HRH The Duke of York as Guests of Honour (via @chris_breeze) #BusinessisGREAT https://t.co/XjSBbrcCAF

— UKinOman (@UKinOman) July 15, 2018

When Declassified viewed the group’s website last week, Andrew was still listed as its patron, despite giving up a slew of other roles over the Epstein scandal in 2019. The website then appeared to be taken offline after our viewing, although an archived version from December 2020 confirms his role.

The group’s secretary-general, Shawqi Sultan, told Declassified that any questions about Prince Andrew’s involvement should be addressed to Buckingham Palace.

However, he did confirm that Sultan Haitham was a patron and it “had been agreed that the British Ambassador in Oman would be [a] member of the organization,” but said the “British end of OBFA was never initially an official Association”.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson told Declassified: “The Duke of York stepped back from public duties in November 2019. As such His Royal Highness currently has no active engagement with any Patronages.”

A statement by His Royal Highness The Duke of York KG. pic.twitter.com/solPHzEzzp

— The Duke of York (@TheDukeOfYork) November 20, 2019

It was partly through his role with the OBFA that Andrew met members of Oman’s ruling family annually between 2015 and 2019. The encounters often took place at Brooks’, an exclusive west London “gentleman’s club.”

Many of the meetings were with Oman’s then culture minister, Sayyid Haitham, who was secretly designated as heir to the throne and became sultan upon the death of his uncle Qaboos in 2020.

Andrew’s sessions with senior Omanis continued despite what Human Rights Watch called “a cycle of prosecutions of activists and critics on charges such as ‘insulting the Sultan’ ” of Oman, which created “a chilling effect on free speech and the expression of dissent.”

A week after Andrew’s dinner with Haitham at the Brooks’ Club in July 2016, the editor of Oman’s only independent newspaper, Azamn, was arrested and in August the paper was ordered to close.

Far from deterring Andrew, the following year he attended a dinner with Oman’s monarchy at the Royal Officer Club in Muscat.

Declassified understands that the club is a lavish leisure venue on Muscat’s seafront, complete with swimming pools, bars and sports courts, which is reserved for the upper echelons of Oman’s regime and guarded by special forces.

A Foreign Office spokesman told Declassified: “Official royal visits are undertaken by Members of the Royal Family at the request of the Government to support British interests around the globe.”

consortiumnews.com

Andrew had always denied any link whatsoever with the then named Virginia Roberts who was in just 17 when the main allegation – that Epstein flew her to London in March 2001 for her to have sex with the British royal – was brought against him. Central to that allegation was a photo taken by Ghislaine Maxwell in her London home on the same night in question which Andrew claims is fake.

Roberts claims that she was forced into the act by Epstein and Maxwell and has gone on the record to talk about the intimate details of the incident, but her case have been light on witnesses or those who can corroborate her allegations. Until now.

Her shocking claims are that Maxwell and Epstein were running a high class sex trafficking organisation which targeted powerful, influential individuals, which some might speculate was part of a Mossad run ‘honey trap’ – a blackmail ring which made Epstein hugely powerful and in a position to ask from the same targets favours, or for highly valuable information which could support its agenda.

In just a few days in mid February, Prince Andrew already feeble case which he was clinging on to – that he had no link whatsoever with Roberts – was shattered though, which in itself raises a number of questions over who is protecting the British royal. And at what price?

First off came the accusation by a palace security guard in London who has challenged Andrew’s claim to be in another part of the country (far from the capital) on the night of the alleged sexual incident. According to the security officer, Andrew returned to Buckingham Palace in the early hours and shouted at the top of his voice at the palace gates for them to be opened.

But far more damning is the testimony of a telecoms man who was employed by Epstein on his private Caribbean island who a British tabloid interviewed days later, who identifies both Prince Andrew and Roberts being intimate with one another and how she appeared to be like a child “hiding behind an adult” sometime around 2001 or thereafter.

There is nothing quite so powerful in a legal case which Roberts (now Giuffre) is preparing than eye witnesses who can stand in the witness box. And the emergence of Steve Scully will be seen as a massive blow to Andrew’s claims now. The FBI too will find it hard to ignore Scully’s allegations.

Or will it?

The notion supported by conspiracy theorists that Andrew is somehow being protected just got ratcheted up ten fold. The FBI interviewed Scully earlier but Prince Andrew’s name, curiously, was never mentioned.

Given that Epstein and Maxwell were almost certainly being bankrolled by Mossad and that Trump’s relations with Israel are unfathomable one has to ask if there is a deliberate plot in the US to not take Virginia Giuffre’s allegations seriously. Add to that Britain and the US forging stronger links post Brexit with a new trade deal in the air and Trump’s double state visit to the Queen and a reasonable question would be is there a ruse on both sides of the Atlantic to keep Andrew out of an FBI investigation? Or perhaps more worryingly, is Andrew part of a bargaining chip from Trump’s side to nail a more advantageous trade deal which benefits America more, given Trump’s style of blackmailing those he wished to secure deals with, which we have seen with other countries he tackles?

It is hard to imagine how many days left Andrew has as a British royal and a possible heir to the throne, given how tough the Queen was with Meghan and Harry, both stripped of their ‘royal’ titles as they bolt to the US to shamelessly cash in their fame. Andrew may well have to flee the UK and find a Caribbean island himself to escape the reach of both the FBI and Giuffre’s lawyers. But for the moment, he seems secure in the UK, protected by that oh-so special relationship between Trump and Buckingham palace. But for how long?

Facing a third general election in a year’s time, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has become the first Israeli prime minster to be criminally indicted while serving in office. Netanyahu was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are facing charges that they received campaign donations from RKW Developers Ltd., a company linked to the Mumbai terrorist bomb blasts of 1993, attacks that killed 257 people and injured 1,400. Hypocritically, Modi attempted to blame the opposition Congress Party for not being aggressive or vigilant enough against the perpetrators of the Mumbai bombings.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is facing impeachment from office on grounds of bribery, extortion, obstruction of Congress, and witness intimidation, among other charges.

On top of Trump’s troubles is the mystery over the death in a federal jail in New York City – the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) – of billionaire convicted child sex offender and accused underage sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein, a close friend of Trump, was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges involving his fleet of aircraft and residences in the US Virgin Islands, Manhattan, France, and New Mexico. Two MCC guards on duty while Epstein allegedly hanged himself in his cell have been arrested by federal authorities. The Epstein scandal has not only entangled Trump but also Britain’s Duke of York, Prince Andrew. The duke, who maintained a relationship with Epstein after the Wall Street investment banker’s underage sex conviction in 2007 in Florida, has resigned from all official functions as a result of the Epstein scandal. The decision, which was reportedly promoted by Queen Elizabeth II, came after a disastrous interview Andrew gave to the BBC, which led to even more questions about his relationship with Epstein. Andrew denied accusations from former Epstein sex trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre about his relationship with her when she was 17, below the age of consent in England.

Seasoned royal watchers in London consider Andrew’s downfall from grace to be the biggest royal scandal since King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry the American divorcee and pro-Nazi, Wallis Simpson.

It is not only Andrew who is facing an investigation over sexual misconduct. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, weeks away from trying to salvage his battered Conservative Party in a December 12 general election, faces allegations that while he was mayor of London, he provided favorable treatment for official London city business to his American girlfriend, Jennifer Arcuri. This included Ms. Arcuri’s participation in official London trade missions to Kuala Lumpur, New York, Singapore, and Tel Aviv. Johnson is also under investigation for another affair with an unpaid city advisor, Helen Macintyre, who gave birth to Johnson’s child. In Britain, it would not be a sex scandal unless the Tories were involved. Adding to Johnson’s political woes was the resignation of his Welsh Secretary, Alun Cairns, over charges that the secretary’s former aide interfered in a rape trial.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has faced increasing criticism from some of his own ministers for alleged government foot dragging in investigating Epstein’s past activities at his Paris, Nice, and Biarritz residences. Calling for a full-scale probe of Epstein’s activities in France are Secretary of State for Gender Equality Marlene Schiappa and Secretary of State for Protecting Children Adrien Taquet. Of special interest to French investigators who want to open their own line of inquiry into Epstein are the circumstances surrounding his repeated visits to France while traveling on an Austrian passport in the 1980s.

Macron was also beset by something that afflicted Trump’s initial two years in office, Cabinet officials living extravagantly off the taxpayers. In Trump’s case, it was his Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, followed by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt. Macron faced a similar scandal with his Minister of Ecological and Solidary Transition, Francois De Rugy, who spent €63,000 of taxpayers’ money to refurbish his Paris apartment. Other purchases included a €700 exercise bike, a €499 gold hairdryer, and lobster and champagne dinners. This infuriated anti-austerity “gilets jaunes” (yellow vest) protesters. Price, Pruitt, and De Rugy all resigned over their respective grifting schemes on the public treasuries.

Just as nepotism has been adopted as official Trump administration policy with regard to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his wife and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, holding senior White House positions, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law’s position in the Turkish government has resulted in charges of nepotism. Berat Albayrak, who is married to Erdogan’s daughter, Esra Erdogan, previously served as Minister of Energy and Natural Resources before being named as Minister of Finance and Treasury.

In the current international climate of unbridled corruption and fraud, it was not long before Kushner and Albayrak established their own “backchannel,” one that is believed to facilitate dubious business schemes involving the businesses of Kushner, Trump (including close Erdogan adviser Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, Trump’s business partner in Trump Towers Istanbul and owner of the CNN Turk news network), and Albayrak’s Calik Holding. Those who have been marginalized by the close business relationships between the Trumps, Erdogan family, and Yalcindag include the Syrian Kurds, Syria’s territorial integrity, exiled Turkish businessman and Islamic charismatic leader Fethulleh Gulen (who is exiled in Pennsylvania with his extradition to Turkey being a top demand of Erdogan to Trump), and Armenian genocide condemnation pronouncements by the US Senate and the White House. US-Turkish relations are now described as between the “two sons-in-law,” a reference to Kushner and Albayrak. A similar dubious relationship exists between Kushner and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. One of the victims of such shadow diplomacy was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered inside the Saudi Consulate-General in Istanbul in October 2018.

In Latin America, several progressive leaders have been tarnished over bribery schemes involving the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht S.A. Sergio Moro, the chief judge who tied former Brazilian presidents Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the bribery scandal in the criminal probe called Operation Car Wash, was named Justice Minister in the far-right wing government of President Jair Bolsonaro. It has since been learned that Moro, while a prosecuting judge, criminally conspired with lead prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol to indict Lula and dig up dirt on the President of the Supreme Federal Court Judge, Teori Zavascki, a Rousseff appointee. Moro’s malfeasance has led to Lula being freed from prison and the entire trumped up case against him being re-examined as a political retribution operation.

On January 19, 2017, Zavascki and other passengers died in the crash of a Hawker Beechcraft small passenger plane north of Rio de Janeiro. The general consensus is that Zavascki, who was pursuing a case involving criminal activity by over 200 Brazilian politicians, including then- president Michel Temer (who succeeded Rousseff after her politically inspired impeachment and removal from office), was the victim of an aerial assassination. Although only a few of Zavascki’s potential targets were known, the fact that Bolsonaro named Moro as Justice Minister has many Brazilians suspecting a “quid pro quo.” It has since been learned that one of Judge Zavascki’s targets may have been Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s son, and who is suspected of bank fraud and laundering money to, among others, Brazil’s First Lady, Michelle Bolsonaro.

Around the world, from Japan to Malta and Argentina to the Philippines, right-wing politicians who promised to “drain the swamp” of public corruption and to otherwise “clean house” have been shown as the very champions of swamps and financially dirty houses.

Prince Andrew and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia have both had a bad week.

On the very same day that Prince Andrew was giving his disastrous interview explaining his relationship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the crown prince – often referred to as MbS – was hearing from international bankers about the failure of his bid to sell part of Aramco, the state oil company, for a high price on the international markets. The sale had been heralded as the moment when Saudi Arabia would use its oil wealth to exalt its status as a world power.

The two princes have many characteristics in common: both have a reputation for arrogance, ignoring expert advice and showing startlingly poor judgement in taking decisions. The result has been a dismally unsuccessful record for both men.

In the case of Prince Andrew, these failures have been on a limited scale thanks to his relative powerlessness beyond his immediate circle. But ever since his elderly father became king of Saudi Arabia in January 2015, MbS has been the effective ruler of his country.

And it is his performance in this role, his power enhanced by his appointment as crown prince in 2017, that explains in part why international investors baulked at buying even a small piece – only 1.5 per cent was on offer – of Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, at the high overall valuation of $2 trillion placed on it by the Saudis.

These new departures introduced by MbS start in 2015 when, as defence minister, he launched a war in Yemen that was supposed to swiftly defeat the Houthi movement that held the capital Sanaa and much of the country.

Almost five years later, the Houthis are still there, but 100,000 Yemenis have been killed and 24 million of them – 80 per cent of the population – need humanitarian assistance. Lack of clean water sources, and the collapse of the medical system, both allegedly targeted by Saudi bombers, has led to 700,000 suspected cholera cases. The UN describes the food and health crisis in Yemen as the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet.

At home, MbS had claimed that he would reform Saudi Arabia’s medieval and oppressive social norms, producing a more tolerant and freer society. But such modernisation as there has been, such as allowing women to drive, has turned out to be cosmetic, while repression has been all too real.

A planned expansion in the rights of women was well publicised abroad, but a Human Rights Watch report issued earlier this month, entitled The High Cost of Change: Repression Under Saudi Crown Prince Tarnishes Reforms, tells a different and much grimmer story, saying that “authorities had tortured four prominent Saudi women activists while in an unofficial detention centre, including by administering electric shocks, whipping the women on their thighs, forcible hugging and kissing and groping.”

As the price of their release, the activists were asked to sign a document and appear on television saying they had not been tortured.

Other reforms have followed the same pattern. In April 2016, MbS launched Vision 2030, an ambitious scheme to modernise the Saudi economy that attracted international plaudits. But the reality of the economic changes to be introduced became clear in November 2017 when leading businessmen and royal family members were confined, some being reportedly abused, as part of an alleged corruption inquiry in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh.

A few are still detained, while others were only released after handing over part or all of their business interests.

For a long period, MbS was treated gently by foreign governments greedy for Saudi contracts and by the foreign media, which bought into a PR picture of MbS as breaking the bonds of an archaic society. President Trump made a triumphal visit to Riyadh soon after his election and frequently tweeted his approval of all that MbS was doing – including his incarceration of the businessmen.

In terms of publicity, all went well enough until 2 October 2018 when a Saudi death squad murdered the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The crime is now admitted by the Saudi authorities, though they deny that MbS knew about the killing in advance – something asserted to the contrary by US senators briefed by US intelligence.

The Khashoggi killing and the grisly dismemberment of his body released a flood of criticism from which MbS has yet to recover. The dead journalist had said the year before his assassination that the crown prince had “promised an embrace of social and economic reform… but all I see now is the recent wave of arrests”.

The tainting of Saudi Arabia’s reputation by the Khashoggi affair, and the torrent of criticism that followed, played a role in deterring foreign investors from buying into Aramco at the price the Saudis wanted.

But what really undermined Saudi Arabia’s reputation for stability was the surprise Iranian/Houthi drone and missile attack on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in September. As significant as the attack itself was Mr Trump’s refusal to retaliate against Iran. What had for so long seemed like a gold-plated US guarantee of Saudi security turned out to be nothing of the sort.

MbS is not going to be displaced because of these mistakes and miscalculations: when he was appointed heir to his father in 2017, the royal court purged and took over the entire Saudi security apparatus. On the other hand, the long list of self-destructive actions by the Saudi authorities in the last five years has left the country much less stable than it once appeared.

Prince Andrew’s take on the career of his fellow royal in Saudi Arabia would make interesting reading. Perhaps he looks on MbS’s absolute power and gigantic wealth with envy; he may even approve of the rigour with which his counterpart asserts his authority. This is not pure guesswork.

Andrew used to be a regular visitor to Saudi Arabia’s near neighbour and de facto protectorate, Bahrain, praising it as “as source of hope for many people in the world”. These kind words contrast with the report of an independent inquiry into the crushing of the Arab Spring protests there in 2011 which details 18 different torture techniques inflicted on detained protesters.

A British diplomat stationed in Bahrain at the time of a Prince Andrew visit later wrote that the thank-you letters he sent to his hosts after one visit to Bahrain – comparing the size of his plane to theirs – made for cringe-making reading.

In one significant respect, however, Prince Andrew is setting a good example for MbS by standing down from his public duties. Doubtless, the Saudi crown prince will be wondering, after the failures and fiascos of the last five years, if he should consider following the same path.

counterpunch.org