This habit mainly comes from the fact that Mohammad knows that once his father King Fahd passes away, he will have no chance to ascend any quicker to the throne that he is with his father alive. His uncles are waiting in the wings and will not let any third generation prince even get close to the real corridors of power.

The greed comes from the instinct that is more and more seen among younger and less important princes which in fact forces them to steal as much as they can while they can. darker clouds are in the horizon in the form of a weak economy, more competition among the princes and the pie is getting smaller, more princes to feed, etc... Mohammad who is estimated to be worth $5 billion still is as corrupt as if he had nothing.

HEALTHY FUN?

Mohammad is not all business. Especially when traveling, he likes to be entertained, which for him means being served by prostitutes. In the early 1980's, one of his business associates, now a member of the British Cabinet, Jonathan Aitken, allegedly provided call girls for Mohammad and his entourage who were visiting a health club which Aitken directed. Front men for Prince Mohammad allegedly bought the club, Inglewood Health Hydro, in the early 1980's and made Aitken director.

Mohammad highly values his relationship with Aitken. He gave him a Jaguar XJ6 as a present after Aitken became a member of the government. Not wanting the public to know that he is beholden to foreign government powers, Aitken allegedly asked his secretary to conceal his receipt of the gift.

"COMMISSION MAN PAR EXCELLENCE"

As stated above, Mohammad is known for his boundless greed for receiving commissions. To satiate his appetite, he keeps his fingers in many pies. In 1992, his front man Sheik Fahd Athel competed for commissions on the Saudi purchase of 13 Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters from United Technologies. Britain's Westland Helicopters LTD and Westland Group plc, as well as Sikorsky, a subsidiary of United Technologies were also allegedly involved.(See Westland Scandal). According to US court documents, bribes were to be paid to Saudi princes through their middlemen in exchange for being awarded the contract which also included maintenance and service of the helicopters. Mohammad was in competition with Prince Sultan for receiving the bribes. Sultan and his son Bandar won that round. Something Mohammad will never forgive Bandar for.

The Prince's main vehicle for garner commissions is his front company, the Al-Bilad Establishment for Fair Trading and Economy of Riyadh. Al- Bilad is a major player in the Saudi Arabian business world. It owns 51 per cent of Brown & Root Saudi, a joint US/Saudi Arabian engineering and construction company responsible for refurbishing the Ras Tanura export oil refinery in Eastern Province, where Mohammad is governor. The estimated cost for this project is $1 billion. Such blatant conflict of interest is business as usual for him, as it is for the royal family in general.The royal percentage takers are everywhere. Probably the most avaricious member of the royal family is another of Fahd's sons, Mohammed. Owner of Al Bilad, the holding company for his many interests, Mohammed began getting rich from contracts with the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (PT,T) when he was only twenty-five years old. In 1977 his greed became public when American ambassador William Porter, speaking for American, Japanese, West German, and French companies cut out of a deal with PIT, complained about a contract that Mohammed engineered between the Saudi government and a consortium headed by N. V. Phillips, the Dutch electronics concern, and L. M. Ericsson, the Swedish telephone company Phillips' price was about five times that which the Western consultants hired by PTT estimated it would cost. Retreating from the public exposure, the government canceled the contract. It has been estimated that if it had gone through, Mohammed would have received a commission of 20 percent of the total cost, or $1.3 billion.

Almost all deals involving members of the royal family are simple contractual arrangements between the ministries and privately owned (or, perhaps more aptly, "princely" owned) companies. A direct cut from Saudi oil revenues is the special and highly secret purview of only a very select number of princes, whose deals rarely come to light. The Wall Street Journal reported that in November 1980 Saudi Arabia ordered one of the four American oil companies that formed the old ARAMCO consortium to begin selling 140,000 barrels a day of Saudi crude to a mysterious buyer in Japan called "Petromonde." The official agreement with Saudi Arabia called for the Japanese firm to pay $32 a barrel, but word soon leaked out from Japan that Petromonde would resell the oil to Japanese refiners for $34.63 per barrel. The extra $2.63 a barrel represented a "commission" that would net the dealer $368,200 a day, or $11 million a month. International oil industry investigators soon learned that Petromonde was not a Japanese company at all but a London-based concern with the same London
telephone and telex numbers as Al Bilad. Discovered, embarrassed Saudi officials canceled yet another of Mohammed ibn Fahd's deals.

The Petromonde case came as close as anything to documenting the payment of large commissions to members of the Saudi royal family to obtain Saudi oil during the days of oil shortages Known as "princely oil", it provided staggering amounts of money to selected members of the House of Saud and represents one of the components of the glue that holds the royal family together. Prominent princes expect a big share of the kingdom's wealth, which goes into their private fortunes and supports an intricate system of private patronage. Among the ma major beneficiaries of the system was the ubiquitous Prince Mohammed ibn Abdul Aziz (d. 1983), the older brother of kings Khalid and Fahd. When he renounced his place in the succession to the throne, Mohammed is said to have been allowed to allocate a share of Petromin's oil* in return for under-the-table commissions from his agents, who then contacted buyers. One deal turned down by an American company could have netted the prince $1.2 million a day.

The sacrosanct oil resources of Saudi Arabia are better protected from the financial manipulations of the royal family than other areas of the Saudi economy. While oil shortages lasted, only the highest ranking members of the family ever had access to oil deals, and then only those involving a small percentage of total production. During the boom, there were too many other less politically sensitive ways for people of privilege to make money. Besides land, joint ventures, and government contracts, there was income from capital invested abroad and an inside track on currency manipulations from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, which controlled the value of the Saudi Riyal. (Copyright Sandra McKey from her book " The Saudis").

Mohammad allegedly continues to garner "commissions" or bribes on defense contracts through Saudi Fal, a subsidiary of Al-Bilad. Saudi Fal is a major sub-contractor in the al-Yamamah II contract between Saudi Arabia and Great Britain.

Mohammad, at the age of 27, struck his first business coup in 1977 with the contract for the Kingdom's first national telephone system. He allegedly received, through al-Bilad, a $500 million commission from the Swedish/Dutch consortium awarded the contract.

Mohammad has shares in Aitken Hume, a financial services company formed by Jonathan Aitken and his cousin Timothy Hume, which furnishes banking services to the royal family.

In 1981, Mohammad, through al-Bilad, owned a 14.9 per cent stake in the TV-am breakfast channel in Great Britain. In a secret deal with Aitken, Aitken used his name in Mohammed's place as stakeholder. Aitken became temporary chief executive officer and stayed on the executive board when his cousin took over. Both Aitken and Hume were forced to resign when the arrangement with Mohammad was discovered.

EYE ON THE THRONE

Prince Mohammad repeatedly makes intelligence lists of possible future Saudi kings. His positives are listed as his control of the richest region in Saudi Arabia, including the major oil fields and refineries, and his handling of the minority Shiite population which has settled in Eastern Province. His strongest negative is cited as his greed. Such a strong love of money could mar his judgment as ruler and compromise his independence.

To strengthen his odds on becoming king, he and Bandar bin Sultan, whose strongest negatives are cited by pundits as his not being of 100 per cent royal blood and his high profile in Western newspapers, have temporarily joined forces against their cousin, Prince Mutaeb bin Abdullah, son of Crown Prince Abdullah who is next in line to the throne. Their "open hostility" has been publicized since 1994.

SOURCES