Business Activities
The ties between Saudi Oger and Prince Abdul Aziz are well known in Saudi Arabia. The company was founded by Rafik Hariri, who built Saudi Oger into a large company with the assistance of King Fahd. Hariri said ‘The meat on my shoulder is from King Fahd,’ according to As'ad Abu Khalil, a professor of political science at California State University Stanislaus, who has written several books and runs the blog The Angry Arab News Service. Hariri, also a former prime minister of Lebanon, was assassinated in 2005. His son, Saad Hariri, took over Saudi Oger and became Lebanon’s prime minister for 14 months before he was ousted in 2011. Saad Hariri and Prince Abdul Aziz are known to be close.
Abdul Aziz bin Fahd owns the fifty percent of the MBC, of which the remaining fifty percent is owned by his maternal uncle Waleed bin Ibrahim al Ibrahim. It is reported that Prince Abdul Aziz deals with both the profits and the ideology of MBC Channels, including al Arabiya.
It emerged in a New York Supreme Court affidavit that he is the secret owner of a $1 billion dollar property portfolio in the US which owns the American headquarters of the oil giant BP and the defence contractor BAe Systems (the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper claimed in January 2011 that the portfolio is in fact £4 billion in value). The affidavit, which was subsequently partially sealed by the judge but had already become available on internet blogs stated that the properties were being managed by a group which included Sheikh Majid Al Ibrahim, Prince’s maternal uncle, and that total control of the portfolio was ultimately seized by Interventure Capital Group and Interventure Advisers, both of Manhattan, New York. According to a press release issued by Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Interventure Capital Group is run by Jaber Al Ibrahim and is an adviser to Naseel Holding Company, the Al Ibrahim family investment vehicle chaired by Sheikh Majid Al Ibrahim. According to an unchallenged report in the UK's daily Telegraph in October 2010, Interventure Capital Group is also behind another major portfolio of properties which had been controlled by a UK-based company, StratREAL. Assets purchased by StratREAL on behalf of Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd included Fifth Street Towers, a Minneapolis office complex, for $294 million in 2007. In May 2012, following a foreclosure on the complex for mortgage default, Fifth Street Towers was sold at a sheriff's auction for $1 over the outstanding debt of $110 million.
In February 2013 it was disclosed in the UK newspaper The Times that Abdul Aziz is one of the backers of Heron Tower, the troubled office building built by colourful London property magnate Gerald Ronson.
Read more about this topic: Abdul Aziz Bin Fahd
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