Saudi intelligence hunt arrives in Malta – Middle East Monitor
Saudi Arabia’s hunt for its former intelligence officer, Saad Al-Jabri, has arrived on the island of Malta, opening a new front in the international confrontation between the exiled critic and Crown Prince Mohamed. Bin Salman.
Known as MBS, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom has been locked in legal battles with Al-Jabri in the United States and Canada for more than a year. The Saudis have accused Al-Jabri of misappropriating state funds and stealing money. They have been desperate, ever since, to lay their hands on the 63-year-old boy who fled the Kingdom after a “soft-coup” that saw MBS replace Mohammed Bin Nayef as the main prince.
Al-Jabri left the kingdom in 2017 and settled in Turkey before moving to Canada. Last year, he opened a lawsuit in the United States claiming that Bin Salman had ordered an affected squad to search for and kill him, just thirteen days after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. . The Saudi government has also filed a case in the United States against Al-Jabri, alleging that it invalidated state funds. He denied the allegation.
With Al-Jabri’s links to the U.S. intelligence, which has been Riyadh’s top intelligence officer for many years, his relentless pursuit of Saudi Arabia has led to a rare intervention by the U.S. Department of Defense. American justice due to concerns that state secrets may be revealed during the legal case.
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In the Maltese part of the international confrontation, Riyadh is seeking to prevent Al-Jabri, who acquired the state’s citizenship of the Island in 2016 through the Individual Investor Program, from selling his apartment in Tigné Point in Sliema.
In the case of the Maltese court, the Saudi-registered Sakab Saudi Holding Company said that it had filed an injunction against Al-Jabri and his Cayman Island-registered company, Ten Leaves Management, to stop them from transferring d the right to use an apartment in Tigné Point, Sliema north of the capital Valletta.
According to Malta today, the sixth-floor apartment in luxury development was purchased in 2018. Sakab, part of a group of 17 companies founded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, claims that Al-Jabri used offshore structures to disguise illicit profits to enrich his family and buy properties around the world.
Al-Jabri is accused of using Sakab as a vehicle to distribute € 6 billion in funds to other commercial entities between 2008 and 2017, turned over to other members of the Sakab group, allegedly on Al-Jabri’s instructions. Apparently, the vast majority of financial transactions were “off the books” and undeclared in official accounts.
“It is in the humble understanding of the applicants, and this always according to the evidence in hand, that Ten Leaves bought the properties using misappropriated funds through a fraudulent scheme as part of Jabri’s efforts to disguise and laundering misappropriated money, “Sakab, who is represented in Malta by the lawyer, Louis Cassar Pullicino, said.
Al-Jabri has denied allegations of theft and misappropriation of state funds.