The documents, filed earlier this year as part of a Canadian civil lawsuit, are labeled “Top Secret” and were signed by a Saudi minister who introduced the orders of Saudi Arabia’s young apparent ruler, the Crown Prince.
“At the instruction of His Highness the Crown Prince, the Minister wrote, according to a translation,” Approve this as soon as the necessary procedures are completed. “
The filing reveals how Sky Prime Aviation was ordered to transfer ownership of the country’s 400 400 billion sovereign wealth fund at the end of 2017. The company’s planes were later used in Khashoggi’s assassination in October 2018.
The Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund, is controlled by the Saudi Crown and is headed by the Crown Prince, known as the MBS. The documents establishing the connection between the planes and the prince were filed in Canada last month by a group of Saudi-state-owned companies as part of an embezzlement lawsuit filed against a former Saudi intelligence officer, Saad al-Jabri.
Al-Jabri was charged with embezzlement after a lawsuit was filed in district court against MBS in Washington, D.C., last year. Al-Jabari has accused the Crown Prince of sending a hit team to Canada to assassinate Khashoggi a few days after his assassination. MBS was summoned by WhatsApp, and in December, Prince’s lawyer asked the court to dismiss the case.
Evidence that the ownership of the private jet fleet was transferred to Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund has not been previously reported and provides another link between Khashoggi’s death and MBS. In October 2018, shortly after Khashoggi’s murder, the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the Gulfstream jet used by the killers belonged to a company controlled by MBS.
“It simply came to our notice then [the company] “And would have known how it was used,” said Dan Hoffman, a former director of the CIA’s Middle East division, about the powerful Crown Prince. “And that’s just more probable evidence that he knew about it. Which always argues. This is more evidence of it.”
As of Thursday, the U.S. intelligence community is preparing to release a long-awaited report with new public details about Khashoggi’s death. Shortly after the assassination of a Saudi journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the CIA shaped with high confidence that the MBSA had personally ordered the assassination, but intelligence officials never spoke publicly or presented evidence. In June 2019, a UN investigator found that it was “inconceivable” that MBS was unaware of the operation.
Saudi officials in Washington, Washington and Riyadh did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The MBS has denied that it ordered Khashoggi’s murder but said it was responsible. Eight suspects were jailed for calling a UN investigator a “parody of justice.”
White House Press Secretary Jane Sasaki said last week that President Biden is working to “restore” American relations with Saudi Arabia, and plans to hold talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud instead of his son, the Crown Prince. Is.
Khashoggi’s former fianc and lawyer for the for-profit organization Faisal Gill, who has filed a federal lawsuit against MBS and two dozen co-defendants, said his client was “pleasantly surprised” that evidence of Bin Salman’s control over Sky Prime Aviation had come to light.
“Any evidence that basically connects MBS and others, especially in a straight line way, which we believe is very important,” Gill said.
“[MBS] Gill added, “She controls a company that she controls. In the fund she hopes it won’t come out, she wanted to use it.” Gile added. “For me it’s not just a direct line to kill Jamal, but also a straight line. The airline is trying to cover it up using that it has complete control.”
A United Nations report on public aviation data and Khashoggi’s death states that Sky Prime Aviation operates two Gulf Stream corporate jets that flew to and from Istanbul with a hit team of 15 people.
According to a UN report, after Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, the killers quickly escaped and boarded the plane. A jet, with tail number HZ-SK1, landed the same evening. An hour and fifteen minutes after landing, she was back in the air with six members of the Saudi team. Four-and-a-half hours later, another plane, tail number HZ-SK2, was aboard with more than seven men from Ataturk Airport, the UN report said.
The first jet flew through Cairo, the second from Dubai to Riyadh. The last two members of the hit team flew commercially from Istanbul to Riyadh.
Sky Prime aviation was operated by Salem Almuzani, son-in-law of Al-Jabri. Almouzani was abducted in Dubai in September 2017 and forcibly deported to Saudi Arabia, according to an amended complaint filed this month by Al-Jabri against the MBS in Washington DC.
For several months, Al-Jabri says, Alumuzaini was tortured, according to a complaint, including from a top MBS associate involved in Khashoggi’s murder. Almuzaini was eventually moved to Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton, where MBSA detained about 200 Saudi royals, officials and business officials in the name of an anti-corruption campaign. The state claims it eventually captured about 100 100 billion in settlements.
Documents ordering the transfer of Sky Prime Aviation in December 2017 contained the words “Top Secret Note Circulation and Very Urgent” along with the sealed cross swords of the Saudi Kingdom’s palm tree and the translation provided to the court. Another document depicting the transfer of shares has been signed by Almuzai, whose current location is unknown.
According to the fund’s website, letters ordering the transfer are signed by Mohammed al-Sheikh, a member of the fund’s fellow board sitting in the cabinet. The other two senior funding officers were the recipients of the notes, one of which is handwritten and contains “instructions to transfer ownership of the companies as soon as possible.”
Sky Prime Aviation, its three Sky affiliates and 16 other companies were ordered by Al Sheikh to transfer control of the fund.
It was so important to the Crown Prince that the fund took over the companies, Alshekh wrote, “to keep His Highness from everything that is done.”
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