Riyadh agrees need for investigation

This news has been read 10801 times!

NO-SHOW BLACKROCK NOT TO CUT TIES WITH SAUDI ARABIA

RIYADH/ISTANBUL, Oct 16, (RTRS): Saudi Arabia’s crown prince agreed on Tuesday there must be a thorough investigation into the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the United States said, after media reports that Riyadh may acknowledge his death in a botched interrogation.

Khashoggi, a US resident and leading critic of the crown prince, vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct 2. Turkish officials say they believe he was murdered there and his body removed, which the Saudis strongly deny.

Overnight, Turkish crime scene investigators entered the consulate for the first time since Khashoggi’s disappearance and searched the premises for more than nine hours. US President Donald Trump, who dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh amid strained ties with its close ally, speculated that “rogue killers” may be responsible. Pompeo met King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh to discuss the incident, which has caused international outrage.

He and Prince Mohammed “agreed on the importance of a thorough, transparent, and timely investigation”, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in Washington. “The Secretary reiterated the President’s concern with respect to Khashoggi’s disappearance, as well as the President’s desire to determine what happened,” she said.

Pompeo is expected to go on to Turkey after dinner with the crown prince. BlackRock Inc Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said on Tuesday that he would not cut ties with Saudi Arabia even as pressure mounts on the country to explain the disappearance of a prominent critic.

Fink is one of several top business executives, including JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Jamie Dimon and HSBC Holdings plc CEO John Flint, who pulled out of a major investment conference in Riyadh after Khashoggi went missing.

Khashoggi, a US resident, vanished after entering the consulate. Turkish officials say they believe he was murdered there and his body removed, which the Saudis strongly deny. Asked on CNBC if he would cut off all business ties with Saudi Arabia if it became clear that King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered Khashoggi’s murder, Fink said, “No.” BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager with oversight of more than $6.4 trillion in assets, is widely followed by investors and economists for its influence at many of the world’s public companies and it also has a foothold with governments around the globe.

Fink has long had relationships with Saudi officials and one year ago announced plans to open offices within the country. Relationships with the business and investment community are essential to the country’s Vision 2030 push to diversify the economy away from oil.

The plan has grabbed attention for its big-ticket initiatives, such as a $500 billion business zone and a plan, now shelved, to sell part of the state oil firm. But the journalist’s disappearance on Oct 2 created a complex calculus for BlackRock, whose chief executive has worked to present it as socially conscious. In a letter to top corporate executives earlier this year, Fink wrote that to “prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

Fink told CNBC he wanted the conference delayed until the end of an investigation into the journalist’s disappearance but that he had not been successful. At that point, he said, he had only one choice and that was to withdraw.

“We needed to be thoughtful and mindful how to navigate this,” Fink said. “I wanted to preserve the relationships that we’d worked so long for.” Meanwhile, the chief executives of HSBC, Standard Chartered and Credit Suisse have pulled out of the high profile conference in Saudi Arabia next week, the latest business leaders to abandon the event amid widespread concern about the fate of Khashoggi. “John Flint will no longer attend Future Investment Initiative,” a spokeswoman for HSBC told Reuters.

StanChart Chief Executive Bill Winters would also not attend, a bank spokesman said. Tidjane Thiam, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, has likewise dropped plans to travel to the Oct 23-25 event amidst uproar over the disappearance of Khashoggi, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.

The moves follow similar decisions by JP Morgan & Chase Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and BlackRock Chief Executive Fink – the first senior bankers to boycott the conference in response to a backlash against the world’s top oil exporter. Executives from the media and technology industries had already withdrawn from the event after the disappearance of Khashoggi.

Khashoggi, a US resident and Washington Post columnist critical of Riyadh’s policies disappeared on Oct 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkey believes he was murdered and his body removed. Saudi Arabia has so far denied that, but American news outlets have reported the country is now preparing to acknowledge Khashoggi’s death in a botched interrogation. Alphabet Inc’s Google on Monday became the latest company to drop out of a business conference in Saudi Arabia.

Google said in a statement that Google Cloud Chief Executive Diane Greene would not attend the Future Investment Initiative Summit scheduled to be held in Riyadh starting Oct 23. Google’s Greene did not offer a reason for her action, and a spokesman andeclined to elaborate. Other business leaders who have said they would not attend the conference, including Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi, said they were concerned about Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Earlier this year Google announced that it would work with a Saudi agency to open five innovation hubs in the country to train aspiring technologists. Saudi Arabia’s riyal rebounded against the US dollar early on Tuesday after CNN reported Riyadh was preparing to acknowledge the death of Khashoggi in a botched interrogation.

The riyal, which had sunk to a twoyear low of 3.7526 against the US dollar on Monday because of concern that Khashoggi’s disappearance could hurt foreign investment in Saudi Arabia, recovered to 3.7514. The riyal is pegged at 3.75 to the dollar and moves outside a 3.7498- 3.7503 range are rare. In the one-year forwards market, used by banks to hedge against possible future moves of the currency, the dollar dropped to 50 points against the riyal – returning to the range of the last few months – from Monday’s high of 100 points. Citing two unidentified sources, CNN said Riyadh was preparing a report acknowledging Khashoggi was killed as the result of an interrogation that went wrong.

The New York Times, citing a person familiar with Saudi plans, reported the Saudi government would blame an intelligence official for a bungled operation. Blaming Khashoggi’s case on mistakes by lower-level personnel would allow the Saudi government to say it never sanctioned his disappearance, and could help to reduce international outrage over the affair, a banker in the Gulf said.

This news has been read 10801 times!