position:crown prince

U.S. officials : Saudi crown prince has hidden his mother from his father, the king - NBC News
▻https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-officials-saudi-crown-prince-has-hidden-his-mother-n847391

When Saudi Arabia’s crown prince visits the White House next week, he’s expected to be welcomed as a reformer who’s expanded women’s rights in one of the most restrictive countries in the world, allowing them to drive and attend sports events.

Yet there is one Saudi woman whom U.S. officials say has not benefited from the prince’s rise: his own mother. Fourteen current and former senior U.S. officials told NBC News that intelligence shows Prince Mohammed bin Salman — often referred to by his initials MBS — blocked his mother from seeing his father, King Salman, more than two years ago and has kept her away from him as the young prince rapidly amassed power.

Prince Mohammed, a key ally of the Trump White House, has concocted various explanations of his mother’s whereabouts over the years, such as that she’s out of the country receiving medical treatment, so King Salman would not know his son has been behind her continued absence, the current and former officials said.

U.S. officials interviewed for this story believe, based on several years of intelligence, that MBS took action against his mother because he was concerned that she opposed his plans for a power grab that could divide the royal family and might use her influence with the king to prevent it. The officials said MBS placed his mother under house arrest at least for some time at a palace in Saudi Arabia, without the king’s knowledge.

Une fois de plus, des attaques contre MBS dans les médias mainstream US, où l’on trouve presque autant de défenses du « jeune réformateur saoudien ». En attendant, les médias et leur PR doivent se goinfrer !

#arabie_saoudite #mbs

Saudis Said to Use Coercion and Abuse to Seize Billions - The New York Times

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-corruption-mohammed-bin-salman.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Hom

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Businessmen once considered giants of the Saudi economy now wear ankle bracelets that track their movements. Princes who led military forces and appeared in glossy magazines are monitored by guards they do not command. Families who flew on private jets cannot gain access to their bank accounts. Even wives and children have been forbidden to travel.

In November, the Saudi government locked up hundreds of influential businessmen — many of them members of the royal family — in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton in what it called an anti-corruption campaign.

Most have since been released but they are hardly free. Instead, this large sector of Saudi Arabia’s movers and shakers are living in fear and uncertainty.

During months of captivity, many were subject to coercion and physical abuse, witnesses said. In the early days of the crackdown, at least 17 detainees were hospitalized for physical abuse and one later died in custody with a neck that appeared twisted, a badly swollen body and other signs of abuse, according to a person who saw the body.

In an email to The New York Times on Sunday, the government denied accusations of physical abuse as “absolutely untrue.”

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To leave the Ritz, many of the detainees not only surrendered huge sums of money, but also signed over to the government control of precious real estate and shares of their companies — all outside any clear legal process.

The government has yet to actually seize many of the assets, leaving the former detainees and their families in limbo.

One former detainee, forced to wear a tracking device, has sunk into depression as his business collapses. “We signed away everything,” a relative of his said. “Even the house I am in, I am not sure if it is still mine.”

As the architect of the crackdown, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, prepares to travel to the United States this month to court American investment, Saudi officials are spotlighting his reforms: his promise to let women drive, his plans to expand entertainment opportunities and his moves to encourage foreign investment. They have denied any allegations of abuse and have portrayed the Ritz episode as an orderly legal process that has wound down.

But extensive interviews with Saudi officials, members of the royal family, and relatives, advisers and associates of the detainees revealed a murkier, coercive operation, marked by cases of physical abuse, which transferred billions of dollars in private wealth to the crown prince’s control.

Corruption has long been endemic in Saudi Arabia, and many of the detainees were widely assumed to have stolen from state coffers. But the government, citing privacy laws, has refused to specify the charges against individuals and, even after they were released, to clarify who was found guilty or innocent, making it impossible to know how much the process was driven by personal score settling.

Part of the campaign appears to be driven by a family feud, as Crown Prince Mohammed presses the children of King Abdullah, the monarch who died in 2015, to give back billions of dollars that they consider their inheritance, according to three associates of the Abdullah family.

And although the government said the campaign would increase transparency, it has been conducted in secret, with transactions carried out in ways that avoid public disclosure, and with travel bans and fear of reprisals preventing detainees from speaking freely.

Most people interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid the risk of appearing to criticize Crown Prince Mohammed.

The government said in its email that “the investigations, led by the Attorney General, were conducted in full accordance to Saudi laws. All those under investigation had full access to legal counsel in addition to medical care to address pre-existing, chronic conditions.”

The government, and several Saudi officials contacted separately, declined to answer further questions about the crackdown.

They have argued, however, that it was a necessarily harsh means of returning ill-gotten gains to the treasury while sending a clear message that the old, corrupt ways of doing business are over. And they have defended the process as a kind of Saudi-style plea bargain in which settlements were reached to avoid the time and economic disruption of a drawn-out legal process.

In a separate statement on Sunday announcing new anti-corruption departments in the Attorney General’s office, the government said that King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed “are keen to eradicate corruption with utmost force and transparency.”

But the opaque and extralegal nature of the campaign has rattled the very foreign investors the prince is now trying to woo.

“At the start of the crackdown they promised transparency, but they did not deliver it,” said Robert Jordan, who served as American ambassador to Saudi Arabia under President George W. Bush. “Without any kind of transparency or rule of law, it makes investors nervous that their investments might be taken and that their Saudi partners might be detained without any rationale to the charges.”

Conservative Lawmaker Who Attacked Corbyn over Yemen Received Luxury Paid Trip from Saudi Arabia
▻http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=21329

http://therealnews.com/media/trn_2018-03-01/print0309yemenuk.jpg

When the United Kingdom’s leftist opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn criticized the government for supporting a catastrophic Saudi war on Yemen and welcoming the Saudi crown prince to London, he was attacked by a pro-Saudi Conservative member of Parliament, who claimed the Labour Party chief is "so poorly informed on Saudi and Yemen."

What this right-wing lawmaker failed to mention is that she previously received thousands of dollars in hospitality expenses from the Saudi regime, while on a luxury junket to meet the Saudi king.

#vendu.e.s

Emails show UAE-linked effort against Tillerson - BBC News
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43281519

The BBC has obtained leaked emails that show a lobbying effort to get US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sacked for failing to support the United Arab Emirates against regional rival Qatar.
Major Trump fundraiser and UAE-linked businessman Elliott Broidy met Mr Trump in October 2017 and urged him to sack Mr Tillerson, the emails reveal.
In other emails, he calls the top US diplomat “a tower of Jello”, “weak” and says he “needs to be slammed”.
Mr Broidy says Qatar hacked his emails.
“We have reason to believe this hack was sponsored and carried out by registered and unregistered agents of Qatar seeking to punish Mr Broidy for his strong opposition to state-sponsored terrorism,” a spokesman for the businessman said.
He said some of the emails “may have been altered” but did not elaborate.
Saudi Arabia, UAE and a number of Arab countries cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in June 2017 over its alleged support for terrorism, a claim which it denies. The unprecedented move was seen as a major split between powerful Gulf countries, who are also close US allies.
Qatari royal ’held against will’ in UAE
Nations silent on Tillerson Qatar blockade plea
The BBC has asked the Qatar embassy in Washington for a response to the accusations.
Mr Broidy’s defence company Circinus has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts with the UAE, according to the New York Times newspaper.
He had recently returned from the UAE when he met Mr Trump at the White House in October.
What did the emails say?
According to a memorandum he prepared of the meeting, Mr Broidy urged continued support of US allies the UAE and Saudi Arabia and advised Mr Trump against getting involved in last year’s row with Qatar.
Mr Broidy called Qatar “a television station with a country” - alluding to broadcaster Al Jazeera - and said it was doing “nothing positive”, according to the emails.
He said he touted a regional counter-terrorism force being set up by the UAE that his company was involved with, and suggested that the US president “sit down” with Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and a top UAE military commander.
“I offered that MBZ [the crown prince] is available to come to the US very soon and preferred a quiet meeting in New York or New Jersey. President Trump agreed that a meeting with MBZ was a good idea,” Mr Broidy wrote in an email.
He also said he advised the president on Mr Tillerson - who was “performing poorly and should be fired at a politically convenient time”.
Mr Tillerson had criticised the blockade of Qatar and called for it to be eased, in comments that contrasted with Mr Trump’s support for the move.
Mr Tillerson spent most of the first year in his position embattled and weakened.
Last autumn, in a rare move for the soft-spoken secretary, the state department held a press conference in which Mr Tillerson pushed back against reports he had called the president “a moron”.
Who did Mr Broidy email?
He emailed a detailed account of his meeting with the president to George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman with decades of experience serving as an interlocutor between the Middle East and Washington.
Sources familiar with the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and possible links between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, tell the BBC that Mr Nader has become a person of interest and has been questioned in recent weeks.
Investigators questioned Mr Nader and other witnesses on whether there were any efforts by the Emiratis to buy political influence by directing money to Mr Trump’s presidential campaign, according to a New York Times report.

What else was in the leaked emails?
Mr Broidy also detailed a separate sit-down with Mr Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, according to the emails.
After Mr Broidy criticised Qatar extensively to Mr Kushner, “Jared’s demeanour was very passive and pleasant but he seemed to not want to engage on this issue,” he wrote to Mr Nader.
Kushner Companies - owned by the family of Jared Kushner - is reported to have in April 2017 sought financing from Qatar for its flagship property at 666 5th Avenue, New York.
However, Mr Kushner has maintained that he has had no role in his family’s business since joining the White House last year.
Has anyone else claimed to have been hacked?
UAE ambassador to Washington Yousef al-Otaiba - who in diplomatic circles is known as the most effective and influential ambassador in Washington - has himself been a recent victim of email hacking.
It’s well known in Washington that Mr Otaiba and Mr Kushner have enjoyed close relationship.
Industry experts looking at both hacks have drawn comparisons between the two, showing reason to suspect links to Qatar.
“This is rinse and repeat on Otaiba,” a source familiar with the hack told the BBC.
The UAE has also been known to use similar tactics, and was accused of hacking Qatari government websites prior to the blockade, according to the FBI.

The War on Yemen and the Credulous Western Embrace of Mohammed bin Salman | The American Conservative

▻http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-war-on-yemen-and-the-credulous-western-embrace-of-moham

David Ignatius ably writes down whatever Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) tells him in a new column. This is the only mention that the war on Yemen receives:

He described ambitious plans to mobilize Yemeni tribes against the Houthis and their Iranian backers in Yemen, a war that has dragged on longer than the Saudis hoped.

Whenever MbS is interviewed by Western reporters and pundits, the subject of Yemen comes up rarely and the countless crimes committed by the Saudis and their allies are never mentioned. It is bad enough that one of the architects of a disastrous war supported by our government is never forced to answer for the war crimes committed by his military and other coalition forces, but it is even worse when the interviewer makes no attempt to put the crown prince’s statements in context. Readers should know that MbS is responsible for a war that has plunged another country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and they should be aware that the Saudi-led coalition has committed numerous war crimes by bombing civilian targets and inflicts cruel collective punishment on millions of people through its blockade. Given the paltry coverage that Yemen usually receives in the U.S., most of Ignatius’ readers probably don’t know this. If MbS’ interlocutors aren’t willing to challenge him about this directly, they ought to be bringing it up in whatever they end up writing about the conversation. The war on Yemen hasn’t just “dragged on longer than the Saudis hoped.” It has been a complete failure in achieving any of its stated goals, and that failure reflects very poorly on the unqualified, reckless defense minister (i.e., MbS) who has overseen the debacle.

It is possible that there could be some news value in uncritically restating the things that a foreign leader says to you, but there doesn’t seem to be any of that here. MbS spins his power grabs and reckless foreign policy decisions to Ignatius, and the columnist gamely relays that spin to us. On the “anti-corruption putsch,” Ignatius tells us that MbS told him that “shock therapy” was required. The fact that MbS’s arbitrary shakedown has frightened foreign investors and undermined his own economic agenda goes unmentioned. We are later informed that the “crown prince said he had been unfairly criticized for pressuring Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign,” but of course he would say that.

Treating Saudi royals with kid gloves is nothing new in American media, but I have been struck by how positive the coverage of Mohammed bin Salman has been when his record has been almost entirely destructive and destabilizing. Were he not the Saudi heir and already de facto ruler of a U.S. client state, he could not hope to buy the friendly coverage that he is freely given in a number of American publications. That would be embarrassing enough at any time, but when the authoritarian ruler in question is also presiding over one of the great crimes of the century it is inexcusable.

Arabic press review: How this da Vinci ended up in Abu Dhabi’s Louvre
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/arabic-press-review-yachts-da-vincis-779640225

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) traded a 26-room luxury yacht to Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) for a Leonardo da Vinci painting - and the world’s most expensive - which the Saudi crown prince bought in December, Arabi21 reports.

Sources told Arabi21 that the yacht, named Topaz, was originally owned by the crown prince’s brother Mansour bin Zayed and is worth $450m. According to specialist websites, the famous yacht is 147 metres long, and can sleep 52 people.

In exchange for Topaz, MbS gave MbZ “Salvator Mundi”, the $450m da Vinci painting which caused an uproar when The New York Times revealed that the Saudi crown prince was the buyer last year.

#trop_trop_la_classe

Saudi Arabia’s millennial crown prince is looking vulnerable - Business Insider

▻http://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabias-millennial-crown-prince-is-looking-vulnerable-2018-2?

Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s stewardship of the throne is being questioned.
Foreign investors were spooked by the recent crackdown on the Saudi elite.
Investors are worried that potential partners could fall victim to another corruption purge.
Mohammed bin Salman’s consolidation of power is believed to have alienated many in the royal family.

As the heir to the Saudi throne, Mohammed bin Salman prepares to head off on a round of visits to western capitals to promote investment in the kingdom, his ambitious economic plans and even his grip on power are being increasingly questioned.

There are big doubts over foreign investors’ willingness to back him in the wake of his recent shakedown of the Saudi elite; much debate about the amount of money he actually managed to raise; and suggestions that the episode, part of efforts to consolidate power, could backfire.

MbS, as the Crown Prince is known, has sought to draw a line under the recent detention of several hundred royals and prominent businessmen in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where they were reportedly forced to sign over assets in return for their freedom.

Most of the detainees have now been released.

Behind the extravagant hype of an Israeli-Saudi ’courtship’, Israel is setting the price for Riyadh to go nuclear

The exaggerated reports and rumours about ever-closer ties are trial balloons: Jerusalem is signalling its reluctant assent to Riyadh obtaining a nuclear deterrent – but at a high price

Victor Kattan Feb 13, 2018

The real stumbling block between the two countries isn’t just the Palestinian issue. The elephant in the relationship, which is far less often mentioned, is Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of nuclear power.
Israel is currently fighting a political battle in Washington to stop the U.S. from letting Riyadh develop its own nuclear energy program that would allow it to enrich uranium that could be used to develop a bomb.
Israel has good reason to be concerned. According to reports, the Trump administration might be willing to lower certain safeguards that prevent U.S. companies from sharing sensitive nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia for fear that it might be used to develop weapons. This administration might not insist on the same precautions that Obama did in its nuclear cooperation agreement with Abu Dhabi, for example, which forfeited its right to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium.

Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, at a news conference to mark the 39th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran, Iran. Feb. 6, 2018ATTA KENARE/AFP
In its negotiations with the U.S., Saudi Arabia is not backing down from its demand to enrich uranium under its planned civilian nuclear program – using, ironically, as its rationale, the conditions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in which Iran has been allowed to enrich uranium. Prince Turki has made it clear, more than once, that should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries would look at all available options to meet the potential threat, including the acquisition of nuclear weapons. 
The only snag for Saudi Arabia is the U.S. Congress, because this is where Israel has influential friends. Even if a deal is reached between Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration, Congress could either block the deal or add clauses preventing the U.S. from selling Saudi Arabia technology needed to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium. 
It is more than possible that through its media campaign, Israel is sending a signal to Riyadh that it understands very well Saudi Arabia’s desire for a nuclear deterrent regarding Iran - but there’s a price to be paid for Israel reducing the level of its direct and indirect opposition in Congress to an independent Saudi nuclear capability.
What Israel appears to be saying to Saudi Arabia, via a variety of trial balloons, is that if Riyadh wants Israel’s help with obtaining support from Congress, then Israel wants something in return: Jerusalem, overflight rights for Israeli aircraft, direct military cooperation and intelligence exchanges, lucrative business deals for Israeli companies in Saudi Arabia, and so on.
The publication of stories about Israel’s ever-closer relationship with Saudi Arabia, which are then magnified by media conglomerates in Qatar and Iran, is certainly one way of ensuring that the messages are received loud and clear.
Saudi Arabia would likely have anticipated that Congress could give them trouble as it has done before. 
But this time things might be different - and these changes might scupper Israel’s strategy.

President Donald Trump meets with Saudi Defense Minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington D.C. March 14, 2017Evan Vucci/AP
A deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia could aid the ailing U.S. nuclear industry and have wider benefits for corporate America. Moreover, the U.S. does not have a monopoly on nuclear technology.
Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has already visited Moscow and signed agreements with Russia to build 16 nuclear reactors by 2030. Saudi Arabia already has nuclear related understandings with China, France, Pakistan, South Korea, and Argentina. One expert has even suggested that Pakistan could assist Saudi Arabia by supplying Riyadh with sensitive equipment, materials, and the expertise that would aid Riyadh with enrichment or processing.
Riyadh is also expanding research at the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy and developing a cadre of nuclear scientists. Saudi Arabia is home to large uranium deposits that could be extracted with the appropriate technology.
Obviously, Riyadh would prefer Washington’s blessing and support in developing its nuclear energy program within the rules of the global nonproliferation treaty rather than having to develop the program clandestinely with the aid of other states. Israel senses this, and would be willing to help Riyadh, but has set the price high.
Israel would far prefer a covert alliance with Saudi Arabia to contain Iran over the U.S. allowing Riyadh to develop an independent nuclear deterrent. But Jerusalem is working to prepare for both eventualities. Whether that strategy will work remains to be seen.
But should the Iran deal blow up on Trump’s watch, and Tehran acquires the capability to develop a weapon, no one should underestimate Riyadh’s resolve for self-preservation.
Victor Kattan is Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and an Associate Fellow at the Faculty of Law. Twitter: @VictorKattan

Arab Neoconservatives and Peace in the Persian Gulf – LobeLog
▻http://lobelog.com/arab-neoconservatives-and-peace-in-the-persian-gulf

http://lobelog.com/wp-content/uploads/3119402460748442463.jpg

Recent years have seen a rise of what could be described as Arab neoconservatives: ambitious leaders such as the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed. Their distinctive feature is a heavy reliance on military power to re-shape the political map of the Middle East in their favor, with the overarching aim of pushing back against Iran, a policy they share with the original, American neoconservatives.

#néocons_arabes

Plea for Money Preceded Saudi Crackdown on Elites - WSJ
▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/plea-for-money-preceded-saudi-crackdown-on-elites-1517186010

A sweeping, self-styled anticorruption campaign that has upended Saudi Arabian politics and business started with a request from the country’s king and new crown prince to prominent citizens: Make patriotic contributions to help shore up government finances.

When the plea for cash was largely rebuffed, according to people familiar with the matter, the prince, Mohammed bin Salman, decided on sterner steps. Members of the country’s elite were lured to the Ritz-Carlton luxury hotel, arrested, accused of bribery and other crimes and pressed to make what the government has termed settlement payments.

#arabie_saoudite

Saudi Arabia’s ‘normalisation’ baffles global business

▻https://www.ft.com/content/b1458710-0672-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5

For many at Davos, Saudi Arabia was baffling rather than normalising. While they were fascinated by the boldness of the economic change and social transformation — the ban on women driving is being lifted and young people can now listen to music and go to the cinema — participants were also alarmed by a crackdown that is damaging the business environment and concentrating political and economic power in the hands of a 32-year-old.

As the WEF was wrapping up in the Swiss Alps, the crown prince was also winding down his anti-corruption operation, following the confiscation of prisoners’ cash, real estate and assets in return for their release. At the weekend, the highest profile detainee, Prince Alwaleed, walked out of the Ritz. To lessen his embarrassment, he gave an interview before he was freed, claiming his detention was a misunderstanding. “Everything’s fine. It’s like home,” he told Reuters, an attitude that did nothing to quell speculation that he parted with a chunk of his wealth to win his freedom.

*

The disconnect between Saudi Arabia’s perception of its actions and the global impact of the purge was evident when I spoke to Khalid al-Falih, the technocrat in charge of the oil ministry and a close aide to MbS. I asked him whether he appreciated the nervousness of global business. “People look at what happened in China, in the anti-corruption campaign of Xi Jinping, and it was unique to China,” he told me. “And they look at what was done in Saudi Arabia given Saudi Arabia’s unique status. I call it something of a hygiene issue. We cleaned it up our way.”

French fear losing control of Louvre in Middle East

The Times & The Sunday Times
▻https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/french-fear-losing-control-of-louvre-in-middle-east-097n8nvxl

When the Louvre opened its first outpost in November, President Macron declared that the £3 billion museum in Abu Dhabi would be the repository of “creation, reason, intelligence and fraternity”.

Less than two months later, the custodians of one of the world’s most famous art collections are accused of losing control of the Louvre of the Sands, as it has been nicknamed, and becoming a tool in the hands of Abu Dhabi’s ruling Al Nahyan family, which also owns Manchester City football club. Far from bringing Renaissance values to the Gulf, the new museum is enveloping the Louvre in Middle Eastern culture, critics have argued. Didier Rykner, founder of La Tribune de l’Art, an art news website, said: “The Louvre has been kidnapped by diplomatic issues in the Middle East. It’s scandalous.”

The criticism came after the Abu Dhabi gallery omitted Qatar from a map next to an exhibit. Officials claimed it had been an oversight, but detractors said it was a deliberate slight borne of the diplomatic row between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the capital.

h
Inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi
“It’s like publishing a map of France and leaving off Brittany,” Mr Rykner said. “No one seriously believes it was a mistake.” The omission showed that the Louvre had little control over the Arab museum to which it has lent its name, he said. His concerns are shared by Jean Lebrun, a historian and radio presenter, who said Mr Macron had fallen into a trap laid by Abu Dhabi’s “ruling clan”. He said: “At the precise moment that it is extending its absolute monarchy, Paris has declared it to be the guarantor of tolerance and progress.”

Concerns first arose when the Louvre Abu Dhabi said that it was due to exhibit Salvator Mundi, the painting by Leonardo da Vinci which sold for a record $450.3 million in November.

The buyer was reported to be Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud, a Saudi prince who is close to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Prince Bader is thought to have acquired the work for Abu Dhabi, although there has been no official confirmation.

Alexandre Kazerouni, a researcher at the Institute of Political Studies, Paris, said France was “not informed about this purchase, about which we know nothing of the details. This is a sign that the UAE authorities have politically appropriated the museum.”

The Arab world’s first universal museum was borne of a treaty between Paris and the UAE in 2007. France lent 300 artworks, including Monet’s La Gare Saint-Lazare, Leonardo’s La Belle Ferronnière and Edouard Manet’s The Fife Player, along with cultural expertise and the Louvre’s brand, for 30 years.

In return, Abu Dhabi agreed to pay €400 million for the right to use the name, along with other fees that could push the total sum up to €1.3 billion. The treaty says the museum will “work towards a dialogue between the East and the West, with each party respecting the cultural values of the other”.

Mr Rykner said: “Jean-Luc Martinez [the Louvre’s president] is very afraid of upsetting the authorities in Abu Dhabi, so he lets them do what they like.”

The Louvre declined to comment.

Saudi Arabia crown prince boasts he has Trump’s backing | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5256603/Saudi-Crown-

EXCLUSIVE: Saudi crown prince boasts he has Trump’s backing to torture princes and seize their wealth as he sends billionaire Twitter owner to prison in ’anti-corruption’ probe
Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is boasting to associates that Trump backs his dramatic ’anti-corruption’ crackdown in Saudi Arabia
Others see his roundup of 11 princes, some of the billionaires, and businessmen as a palace coup to secure his position as kingdom’s de facto leader
Source tells DailyMail.com the prince known as MBS has said Trump backs seizing their assets as long as those in the U.S. do not leave the country.

#daily_mail tout de même et #prison_dorée

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer: Salafi mission calls into question Saudi concept of moderation and policy in Yemen
▻http://mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/2018/01/salafi-mission-calls-into-question.html

Plans to open a Salafi missionary centre in the Yemeni province of Al Mahrah on the border with Oman and Saudi Arabia raise questions about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salah’s concept of a moderate form of Islam.

The questions are prompted by the fact that Prince Mohammed has so far put little, if any, flesh on his skeletal vow last October to return his ultra-conservative kingdom to “moderate Islam.”

#arabie_saoudite

Tapes Reveal Egyptian Leaders’ Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move - The New York Times

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/world/middleeast/egypt-jerusalem-talk-shows.html?smid=tw-share

As President Trump moved last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an Egyptian intelligence officer quietly placed phone calls to the hosts of several influential talk shows in Egypt.

“Like all our Arab brothers,” Egypt would denounce the decision in public, the officer, Capt. Ashraf al-Kholi, told the hosts.

But strife with Israel was not in Egypt’s national interest, Captain Kholi said. He told the hosts that instead of condemning the decision, they should persuade their viewers to accept it. Palestinians, he suggested, should content themselves with the dreary West Bank town that currently houses the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah.

“How is Jerusalem different from Ramallah, really?” Captain Kholi asked repeatedly in four audio recordings of his telephone calls obtained by The New York Times.

“Exactly that,” agreed one host, Azmi Megahed, who confirmed the authenticity of the recording.

For decades, powerful Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have publicly criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, while privately acquiescing to Israel’s continued occupation of territory the Palestinians claim as their homeland.

Continue reading the main story
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But now a de facto alliance against shared foes such as Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State militants and the Arab Spring uprisings is drawing the Arab leaders into an ever-closer collaboration with their one-time nemesis, Israel — producing especially stark juxtapositions between their posturing in public and private.

Mr. Trump’s decision broke with a central premise of 50 years of American-sponsored peace talks, defied decades of Arab demands that East Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian state, and stoked fears of a violent backlash across the Middle East.

Arab governments, mindful of the popular sympathy for the Palestinian cause, rushed to publicly condemn it.

Egyptian state media reported that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had personally protested to Mr. Trump. Egyptian religious leaders close to the government refused to meet with Vice President Mike Pence, and Egypt submitted a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a reversal of Mr. Trump’s decision. (The United States vetoed the resolution, although the General Assembly adopted a similar one, over American objections, days later.)

King Salman of Saudi Arabia, arguably the most influential Arab state, also publicly denounced Mr. Trump’s decision.

At the same time, though, the kingdom had already quietly signaled its acquiescence or even tacit approval of the Israeli claim to Jerusalem. Days before Mr. Trump’s announcement, the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, privately urged the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to accept a radically curtailed vision of statehood without a capital in East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian, Arab and European officials who have heard Mr. Abbas’s version of events.

What Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” says about Trump’s collusion with Israel
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/what-michael-wolffs-fire-and-fury-says-about-trumps-collusion-is

However, the special counsel probe by Robert Mueller has indeed uncovered some collusion between the Trump team and a foreign power: Israel.

In a plea agreement last month for making false statements to the FBI, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn admitted that he had contacted foreign governments during the final weeks of the Obama administration to try to derail a UN vote condemning Israeli settlements.

This possibly illegal effort to undermine the policy of the sitting administration was done at the direction of Kushner and at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yet mainstream pundits have shown little concern, just as they have shown little interest in any further revelations about what we might well call Israelgate coming out of the Wolff book.

As the book’s publication was brought forward amid the media frenzy, I decided to take a look.

It turns out that Fire and Fury contains evidence that Trump’s policy is not so much America First as it is Israel First.

Wolff recounts an early January 2017 dinner in New York where Bannon and disgraced former Fox News boss Roger Ailes discussed cabinet picks.

Bannon observed that they did not have a “deep bench,” but both men agreed the extremely pro-Israel neocon John Bolton would be a good pick for national security adviser. “He’s a bomb thrower,” Ailes said of Bolton, “and a strange little fucker. But you need him. Who else is good on Israel?”

“Day one we’re moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s all in,” Bannon said, adding that anti-Palestinian casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson was on board too.

“Let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza. Let them deal with it. Or sink trying,” Bannon proposed. “The Saudis are on the brink, Egyptians are on brink, all scared to death of Persia.”

Asked by Ailes, “Does Donald know” the plan, Bannon reportedly just smiled.

Bannon’s idea reflected “the new Trump thinking” about the Middle East: “There are basically four players,” writes Wolff, “Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The first three can be united against the fourth.” Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be “given what they want” in respect to Iran, and in return would “pressure the Palestinians to make a deal.”

Another key foreign policy relationship for the Trump administration has been with Mohammad bin Salman, the reckless crown prince and real power in Saudi Arabia, who has been willing to go along with the plan, especially by cozying up to Israel.

According to Wolff, the lack of education of both Trump and MBS – as the Saudi prince is commonly known – put them on an “equal footing” and made them “oddly comfortable with each other.”

Trump, ignorant and constantly flattered by regional leaders, appeared to naively believe he could pull off what he called “the biggest breakthrough in Israel-Palestine negotiations ever.”

Trump on Saudi Leadership Shake-up: “We’ve Put Our Man on Top!”
▻https://theintercept.com/2018/01/04/trump-saudi-arabia-fire-and-fury-michael-wolff

When Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad bin Salman effectively launched a coup and unseated his political rival in June, President Donald Trump took private credit. “We’ve put our man on top!” Trump told his friends, writes Michael Wolff in his forthcoming book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman had ousted his nephew Mohammad bin Nayef as crown prince and replaced him with his then-31-year-old son, bin Salman, shaking up the line of succession and turning on decades of custom within the royal family. The move was announced in the dead of night and was just another step in bin Salman’s rise to power in the kingdom in recent years. The king also removed bin Nayef, once a powerful figure in the country’s security apparatus, from his post as interior minister.

Just a month earlier, Trump had visited Saudi Arabia on his first overseas trip, meeting with leaders from across the Middle East and signing a $110 billion aspirational arms deal with the kingdom’s leaders. When bin Salman was named crown prince, Trump called and congratulated him on his “recent elevation.”

Wolff describes Trump’s Saudi trip as a “get-out-of-Dodge godsend,” as it was an escape from Washington shortly after the president fired FBI Director James Comey. “There couldn’t have been a better time to be making headlines far from Washington. A road trip could transform everything.”

The book is based on 18 months of interviews and access to Trump and his senior staff. But Wolff has a history of being an unreliable narrator, and questions have already been raised about the veracity of his claims. Trump, for his part, is outraged by the book, which contains damning passages about him and his family, attributed to the president’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. The president’s lawyer has demanded that Wolff and his publisher cease and desist publication of the book.

#arabie_saoudite

EXCLUSIVE: Senior Saudi royal on hunger strike over purge | Middle East Eye
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/senior-saudi-royal-hunger-strike-722949715
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/main-images/Talal+bin%20Abdulaziz.AFP_.jpg

Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz, the father of Alwaleed bin Talal and first progressive reformer in the House of Saud, has gone on a hunger strike in protest at the purge being carried out by his nephew Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the detention of three of his own sons.

The 86-year-old prince, who is the half brother of King Salman, stopped eating on 10 November, shortly after his first son, Alwaleed, was arrested on 4 November, and has lost 10 kilos in one month.

Last week, a feeding tube was inserted into him, but his condition at the King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh remains weak, according to several people who have visited him.

(...) Prince Talal is known as a liberal. A former finance minister in the government of King Saud (1953-64), he became known as the Red Prince in the 1960s for leading the Free Princes Movement which called for an end to the absolute monarchy.

But the royal family rejected the movement and Talal was forced into exile in Cairo before his mother was able to engineer a reconciliation with the family.

Talal campaigned for women’s rights long before the decision in September to allow Saudi women to drive. The prince said in one interview: “Saudi women will take their rights eventually... the march towards that should not stop and we have to accelerate this a bit."

The prince has continued to campaign for a constitutional monarchy and the instigation of the separation of powers, which he claims is enshrined in the constitution.

(...) In addition to Alwaleed and his brothers, other princes are still in detention. They include Turki bin Nasser, Turki bin Abdullah, and Fahd bin Abdullah bin Abdulrahman.

There is no definitive word of the fate of Abdulaziz bin Fahd. There are persistent accounts that he resisted arrest, and during the fight that ensued, he suffered a stroke or a heart attack. He is believed still to be alive, but in a vegetative state, according to several sources.

Mohammed bin Nayef, the former crown prince, ousted in a palace coup conducted before the November purge, and Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, who was arrested as part of the purge, have reportedly been released.

Officials close to MbS have staged public appearances for Miteb, including an encounter in which bin Salman publicly kissed the man he imprisoned and had mistreated physically. This piece of theatre was staged at an annual horse race for locally bred and imported horses in Janadriyah.

#prison_dorée #arabie_saoudite

Nour Samaha on Twitter: “Front page of the last edition for 2017 of #Lebanese daily Al Akhbar: Beauty and the Beast (Image of 16 year old #Palestinian Ahed Tamimi and #Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman) ▻https://t.co/u0H4I9G204”
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/Nour_Samaha/status/947025212276658176

Why Saad Hariri Had That Strange Sojourn in Saudi Arabia - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-saad-hariri-mohammed-bin-salman-lebanon.html

Pas de trève des confiseurs aux USA ! Etrange offensive médiatique contre MbS, le tout daté du 24 décembre.

Dans cet article du NYT (pas fracassant) qui relate la détention de Hariri en Arabie saoudite :

As bizarre as the episode was, it was just one chapter in the story of Prince Mohammed, the ambitious young heir apparent determined to shake up the power structure not just of his own country but of the entire region.

Dans le Washington Post (où il est décrit comme “le prince de l’hypocrisie” ▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/saudi-arabias-crown-prince-of-hypocrisy/2017/12/24/b331025a-dc3f-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html:
If he is truly interested in demonstrating enlightened and modern leadership, he should unlock the prison doors behind which he and his predecessors have unjustly jailed people of creativity, especially writers critical of the regime and intolerant religious hard-liners. Recently, he oversaw a crackdown that swept up influential clerics, activists, journalists and writers on vague charges of endangering national security. Allowing these voices to thrive and exist in the open would be a real contribution to the kind of society he says he wants. In particular, he should arrange an immediate pardon for blogger Raif Badawi, serving a 10-year jail sentence in the kingdom for the crime of free expression. Mr. Badawi offended hard-liners when he wrote that he longed for a more liberal Saudi society, saying, “Liberalism simply means, live and let live.”

Opening Mr. Badawi’s cell door would do more to change Saudi Arabia than purchasing a fancy yacht and a villa in France.

Et, Newsweek en remet une couche sur le Yémen notamment : But by far the biggest warning sign that Saudi Arabia is not ready to take human rights seriously is what it is doing in neighboring Yemen.

“Earlier in November the U.N. warned that Yemen is on the brink of famine on a scale that the world has not seen in decades. This has been caused in no small part by the actions of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in the country.

Since early November, Saudi Arabia has tightened a blockade preventing nearly all food and life-saving aid from reaching an already starving and battered nation. An estimated 130 Yemeni children are dying every day, according to Save the Children.

Though key access routes have since been reopened, there is little evidence that enough critically needed aid is being allowed in or guarantees that it will not be tightened again following the Huthis’ control of Sana’a. There certainly has been an uptick in air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in December.

All parties to the conflict have crimes to answer for, but in its fight against Huthi rebels in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has decided that the collective punishment of Yemeni civilians is an acceptable tactic in war. It is not.

The Saudi Arabian authorities are not keen for the outside world to see how they are waging this war. Yet the pictures are starting to trickle out. It is these images, as well as those of the real reformers in Saudi Arabia who are languishing behind bars, that we should keep in mind next time we think about casually endorsing the new Crown Prince’s efforts to bring about reform.”

Et Newsweek en remet une couche sur le Yémen notamment, sous le titre “Les nouveaux habits de l’emperuer” ▻http://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-and-emperors-new-clothes-758219 :
But by far the biggest warning sign that Saudi Arabia is not ready to take human rights seriously is what it is doing in neighboring Yemen.

Earlier in November the U.N. warned that Yemen is on the brink of famine on a scale that the world has not seen in decades. This has been caused in no small part by the actions of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in the country.

Since early November, Saudi Arabia has tightened a blockade preventing nearly all food and life-saving aid from reaching an already starving and battered nation. An estimated 130 Yemeni children are dying every day, according to Save the Children.

Though key access routes have since been reopened, there is little evidence that enough critically needed aid is being allowed in or guarantees that it will not be tightened again following the Huthis’ control of Sana’a. There certainly has been an uptick in air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in December.

All parties to the conflict have crimes to answer for, but in its fight against Huthi rebels in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has decided that the collective punishment of Yemeni civilians is an acceptable tactic in war. It is not.

The Saudi Arabian authorities are not keen for the outside world to see how they are waging this war. Yet the pictures are starting to trickle out. It is these images, as well as those of the real reformers in Saudi Arabia who are languishing behind bars, that we should keep in mind next time we think about casually endorsing the new Crown Prince’s efforts to bring about reform."

#arabie_saoudite

World’s Most Expensive Home? Another Bauble for a Saudi Prince - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/world/middleeast/saudi-prince-chateau.html

LOUVECIENNES, France — When the Chateau Louis XIV sold for over $300 million two years ago, Fortune magazine called it “the world’s most expensive home,” and Town & Country swooned over its gold-leafed fountain, marble statues and hedged labyrinth set in a 57-acre landscaped park. But for all the lavish details, one fact was missing: the identity of the buyer.

Now, it turns out that the paper trail leads to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, heir to the Saudi throne and the driving force behind a series of bold policies transforming Saudi Arabia and shaking up the Middle East.

#arabie_saoudite #corruption #mohammed_bullshit

En Arabie saoudite, la lutte contre la corruption tout ça... Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Identified as Buyer of Record-Breaking da Vinci
▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabias-crown-prince-identified-as-buyer-of-record-breaking-da-vinci-1512

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is the buyer of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci that sold for a record $450.3 million last month, according to U.S. government intelligence and a Saudi art-world figure familiar with the purchase, a disclosure that offers a rare glimpse inside a rivalry between two Persian Gulf nations to scoop up some of the world’s masterpieces.

Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed, a lesser-known figure and a distant relative of the crown prince, was the nominal winner of the auction, held at Christie’s in November, the Saudi art-world figure said, “but he is a proxy for MBS.”

“It is a fact that this deal was done via a proxy,” the person said.

The revelation that the crown prince is the purchaser of the sought-after portrait of Jesus Christ —the most expensive painting ever sold at auction—settles one of the biggest mysteries in the art world. And it comes at a fraught political moment for the 32-year-old Saudi leader, who is trying to portray himself as a reformer determined to root out corruption in the oil-rich kingdom.

Israel lobby billionaire praises Kushner for collusion with Netanyahu | The Electronic Intifada | Ali Abunimah Power Suits 4 December 2017
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-billionaire-praises-kushner-collusion-netanyahu

https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_max_1x/public/2017-12/kushner_saban.jpg?itok=PvKQAKAX×tamp=1512413533

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner received public praise on Sunday from a billionaire Israel lobby financier for his possibly illegal attempts to derail a UN Security Council vote condemning Israel’s settlements a year ago.

This came as news broke that Kushner failed to disclose in government ethics filings his role as director of a family foundation that funded Israeli settlements.

Kushner, a senior adviser to Trump, is in charge of efforts to revive the so-called peace process.

New details of Kushner’s Saudi-backed plan reported Sunday confirm that it would require nothing less than a complete capitulation by the Palestinians to Israel’s demands, leaving them with a state in name only.
“Nothing illegal”

On Sunday, Kushner appeared at the Saban Forum, an Israel lobby conference at Washington’s Brookings Institution, financed by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban.

Saban and Kushner sat on stage for what was billed as a “keynote conversation.”

“You’ve been in the news the last few days, to say the least. But you’ve been in the news about an issue that I personally want to thank you for, because you and your team were taking steps to try and get the United Nations Security Council to not go along with what ended up being an abstention by the US,” Saban said in the exchange in the video at the top of this article.

“As far as I know there was nothing illegal there but I think that this crowd and myself want to thank you for making that effort.”

“Thank you,” Kushner responded.
(...)

“Peace” plan

Given the systematic lack of accountability for senior US officials, dating back decades, there is little reason to expect that anything short of an indictment will remove Kushner from his role.

And the more that is known about the “peace plan” he is helping forge, the clearer it is that Kushner and his colleagues are simply mouthpieces for Netanyahu.

On Sunday, The New York Times characterized the as yet unpublished plan in the following terms: “The Palestinians would get a state of their own but only noncontiguous parts of the West Bank and only limited sovereignty over their own territory. The vast majority of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which most of the world considers illegal, would remain. The Palestinians would not be given East Jerusalem as their capital and there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.”

These were the elements reportedly conveyed to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman last month with an ultimatum that he accept them or resign.

These ideas are so far below what any Palestinian could ever accept that even Abbas was “alarmed and visibly upset” by the Saudi proposal, according to an official from his Fatah party cited by the Times.

The White House has denied that its plan has been finalized, and Saudi Arabia denied it supported such positions, according to the Times.

But the newspaper provides ample reason to doubt those denials, noting that: “the main points of the Saudi proposal as told to Mr. Abbas were confirmed by many people briefed on the discussions between Mr. Abbas and Prince Mohammad, including Mr. [Ahmad] Yousef, the senior Hamas leader; Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Parliament; several Western officials; a senior Fatah official; a Palestinian official in Lebanon; a senior Lebanese official; and a Lebanese politician, among others.”

The Saudis have been pressuring the Palestinians to capitulate to Israel evidently to clear the Palestinian cause out of the way so that the growing Saudi-Israeli alliance aimed at Iran can be brought fully into the open.

One element of the plan reportedly includes giving Palestinians a capital in the village of Abu Dis, instead of Jerusalem.

This is a revival of a 1990s fantasy in which the small village would be renamed “al-Quds” and declared the “capital of Palestine,” while the real city of Jerusalem is swallowed up by Israel.

Israel currently uses part of Abu Dis as an illegal garbage dump.

#Flynn #Kushner #Mueller

An Open Letter by Senior Middle East Scholars to the New York Times Regarding its Thomas Friedman’s column, “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, At Last.” | Middle East Research and Information Project

▻http://www.merip.org/open-letter-senior-middle-east-scholars-new-york-times-regarding-its-thomas-f

published November 30, 2017

We write as scholars of the Middle East and the Muslim world with long, collective experience on Gulf and Arabian Peninsula policy issues to express our amazement, concern and anger that the New York Times would publish Thomas Friedman’s recent essay “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, At Last.”

We understand that opinion writing allows for some degree of license in the interpretation of events and issues. But Mr. Friedman’s description of the situation in Saudi Arabia is so divorced from reality as to call into question his competence as a journalist or opinion writer. The so-called “Arab Spring” was an attempt by young people and, soon thereafter, large sections of the population of several Arab countries to force their governments to democratize their political systems; to resist stifling of speech and expression; and to halt large-scale systematic torture and physical abuse of citizens by security forces. Not only has the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman not addressed any of these issues, all the evidence points to the opposite conclusion—that his growing power has been accompanied by a ramping up of censorship, arrests, imprisonments without (fair) trials and other forms of violent repression against dissent.

Even worse, Mr. Friedman has nary a word on the unmitigated disaster that is the Saudi war in Yemen, which has now surpassed Syria as the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. The evidence for bin Salman’s leading role in executing this illegal, murderous war that has done immeasurable harm to tens of millions of Yemenis and thrown the entire Arabian peninsula and Gulf region into chaos is incontrovertible. We cannot understand how any professional journalist (which Mr. Friedman describes himself as at the start of the article) could engage in a long-form interview with bin Salman and avoid interrogating the issue in any detail, essentially giving him a pass for being the mastermind of an illegal war that has devastated the lives of millions, and today borders on genocide.

Macron to give Saudi Arabia list of extremist groups to cut finan

▻https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2017/11/30/macron-to-give-saudi-arabia-list-of-extremist-groups

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he would draw up a list of extremist groups to give to Saudi Arabia after its crown prince pledged to cut their funding.

Saudi Arabia finances groups overseen by the Mecca-based Muslim World League, which for decades was charged with spreading the strict Wahhabi school of Islam around the world.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman claims he is seeking to modernise the kingdom and promote a more open and tolerant interpretation of Islam.

“He never did it publicly, but when I went to Riyadh (this month), he made a commitment, such that we could give him a list and he would cut the financing,” Macron said during an interview with France 24 television.

“I believe him, but I will follow up. Trust is built on results,” Macron added.