The documents, filed as part of a Canadian civil suit earlier this year, are labeled “Top Secret” and signed by a Saudi minister who transmitted the orders of the crown prince, the de facto young ruler of Saudi Arabia.
“According to the instructions of His Highness the Crown Prince,” wrote the minister according to a translation, “immediately approve the completion of the necessary procedures for this.”
The lawsuit describes how Sky Prime Aviation’s property was ordered to be transferred to the country’s $ 400 billion sovereign wealth fund in late 2017. The company’s planes were later used in the Khashoggi assassination in October 2018.
The Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund, is controlled by the Saudi crown and chaired by the Crown Prince, known as MBS. The documents establishing the link between the planes and the prince were presented by a group of Saudi state-owned companies as part of an embezzlement suit opened last month in Canada against a former Saudi intelligence official, Saad Aljabri.
The charges of embezzlement against Aljabri came after a lawsuit he filed last year in Washington, DC, in the District Court against MBS. Aljabri accused the Crown Prince of sending a murder team to kill him in Canada just days after Khashoggi’s murder. MBS was summoned by WhatsApp and in December, a lawyer for the prince asked the court to close the case.
Evidence that ownership of the private aircraft fleet has been transferred to the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund has not been previously reported and provides another link between Khashoggi’s death and MBS. In October 2018, not long after Khashoggi’s murder, the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the Gulfstream jets used by the killers belonged to a company controlled by MBS.
“He would be tracking [the company] and know how it was used, “said Dan Hoffman, former director of the CIA’s Middle East Division, of the powerful Crown Prince.” And it’s just more potential evidence that he knew it. That has always been restraint. This is just further evidence of this. “
As early as Thursday, the US intelligence community is due to release a long-awaited report with new public details about those responsible for Khashoggi’s death. Not long after the Saudi journalist was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the CIA assessed with great confidence that MBS personally ordered the murder, but intelligence officials never spoke publicly or presented evidence. A United Nations investigator discovered in June 2019 that it was “inconceivable” that MBS was unaware of the operation.
Saudi officials in Washington and Riyadh did not immediately respond to the new revelations. MBS denied that he ordered Khashoggi’s murder, but said he has responsibility. Eight suspects were sentenced to prison in what the UN investigator called a “parody of justice”.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week that President Joe Biden is working to “recalibrate” the American relationship with Saudi Arabia and plans to communicate with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud instead of his son, the Crown Prince.
Faisal Gill, a lawyer for Khashoggi’s ex-fiancee and a non-profit organization that opened a federal case against MBS and two dozen co-defendants, said his client was “pleasantly surprised” by the evidence of Bin Salman’s control about Sky Prime Aviation coming to light.
“Any evidence that basically links MBS and others, especially in a direct way, which we believe so, is extremely important,” said Gill.
“[MBS] he wanted to use a company that he controls, in a fund that he absolutely controls, in the hope that it will not leave, “added Gill.” This to me is not only a hotline for him to kill Jamal, but also a hotline for him trying to cover it up using an airline company over which he has complete control. “
Sky Prime Aviation operates the two Gulfstream corporate jets that flew to and from Istanbul with most of the 15-man team, according to public aviation data and a United Nations report on Khashoggi’s death.
According to the UN report, after Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, the killers fled quickly and headed for the planes. A jet, with the tail number HZ-SK1, had just landed that night. An hour and fifteen minutes after landing, he was back on air with six members of the Saudi team. Four and a half hours later, the second plane, tail number HZ-SK2, took off from Ataturk airport with seven more men on board, the UN report said.
The first jet flew through Cairo, the second through Dubai, on the way back to Riyadh. The last two members of the attack team flew a commercial plane from Istanbul to Riyadh.
Sky Prime Aviation was run by Aljabri’s son-in-law, Salem Almuzaini. According to an amended complaint filed this month by Aljabri against MBS in Washington DC, Almuzaini was kidnapped in Dubai in September 2017 and forcibly returned to Saudi Arabia.
For several months, Aljabri says Almuzaini was tortured and abused, according to the complaint, including by an important MBS advisor involved in the Khashoggi murder. Finally, Almuzaini was transferred to Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton, where the MBS detained some 200 Saudi royals, officials and executives in the name of an anti-corruption campaign. The state claims to have confiscated about $ 100 billion in settlements.
The documents ordering the transfer of Sky Prime Aviation in December 2017 include the Kingdom of Arabia palm seal with crossed swords and the words “MAXIMUM SECRET FOR CIRCULATION AND VERY URGENT”, according to the translation provided to the court. Another share transfer document is signed by Almuzaini, whose current whereabouts are unknown.
The letters ordering the transfer are signed by Mohammed Al-Alsheikh, another member of the fund’s board that is part of the Council of Ministers, according to the fund’s website. Two other senior officials of the fund received the notes, one of which is handwritten and includes instructions “to do whatever is necessary as quickly as possible to transfer the companies’ properties”.
Sky Prime Aviation, three of its Sky affiliates and 16 other companies were transferred to the control of the fund by Alsheikh.
It was so important for the Crown Prince that the fund should take control of the companies, Alsheikh wrote, that “Your Highness must be kept abreast of what is being done”.
