Making the Rules

"He has tried to build an image of himself, with a fair amount of success, that he is different, that he's a reformer, at least a social reformer, and that he's not corrupt."
"And this [recent revelations of excessively costly personal acquisitions of real estate property -- sumptuous mansion and luxury vessels] is a severe blow to that image."
Bruce O. Riedel, former C.I.A. analyst, author

"Our country has suffered a lot from corruption from the 1980s until today. The calculation of our experts is that roughly 10 percent of all government spending was siphoned off by corruption each year, from the top levels to the bottom." 
"Over the years, the government launched more than one ‘war on corruption,’ and they all failed. Why? Because they all started from the bottom up."
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman bought Château Louis XIV in 2015 for about $300 million. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

With vast financial resources, wealth beyond imagining, access to the world's most extravagant and rare properties and art are within reach. It would take enormous self-discipline and a penchant toward asceticism and indifference to the rare and the beautiful, to spurn ownership of desirable objects which 99.9% of the world's inhabitants would never even dream of having. Obviously, the scion to the richest fortune in the world even if it represents a state fortune, is not prepared to deny himself such opportunities when others about  him, extended members of the same royal family, indulge in massive expenditures for desirable properties.

The difference being, of course, is that while the others are indifferent to world opinion and make no effort to establish that they have the greater interests of their country at heart, let alone the fortunes of those living as co-nationals struggling to get by, the heir to the throne of the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has portrayed himself as a hard-working, abstemious man prepared to sacrifice for the greater good of the future of Saudi Arabia in the face of vastly educed income from falling oil prices.

True, he has distinguished himself through statements of his intentions to liberalize the socially straitened norms of his country in its commitment to bare-bones, fundamentalist, Salafist Islam. The private life he leads is one of self-indulgence, and since his father the king sees no reason to restrain his son-and-heir he appears free to do as he wishes. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon has led a purported crackdown on 'corruption' within the kingdom, deploring extended family members and the elite business class for withholding money from state coffers to stuff their personal bank accounts.

The Serene yacht docked in Auckland in New Zealand in January 2015, when it was then owned by Russian tycoon Yuri Schefler       Phil Walter/Getty

Fiscal austerity is the new byword in Saudi Arabia, a tightening of the financial belt for one and all. With a handful of obvious exceptions, since those who make the rules don't necessarily play by the rules. While the Crown Prince has placed a dozen royals and hundreds of Saudi business elites under luxury detention to crack down on corruption, some view the action a a political purge. "Ludicrous", scoffs the prince: "So you have to send a signal, and the signal going forward now is, 'You will not escape'."

The kingdom's budget deficits must be met with financial discipline. To that end a quarter of a trillion dollars in state projects have been set aside in an effort to balance deficits against revenues. Which did not, evidently cause King Salman to hesitate in his plans to build a luxurious new vacation palace on the coast of Morocco. He is, after all, the king. And Prince Mohammed is the Crown Prince. So that when he went agog over a 134-meter yacht equipped with two swimming pools and a helicopter at a selling price of $420-million euros, he simply proceeded to acquire the yacht.

Wouldn't you smile ear-to-ear if you were he? Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman  Newsweek

He did because he could. He could not deny himself what he impulsively craved. He paid less for the chateau in Louveciennes, modelled on Versailles, recently built to exact standards and 21st-century technology enabling remote control by iPhone of all its electronic and electric features and recognized as the most costly private home ever to hit the market. Not that the Prince spends all his time negotiating acquisitions. There is also work to be done; launching an air campaign in Yemen, blockading Qatar, loosening the religious reins restricting Saudi women.

Just to think of it boggles the mind; ownership of the work of one of the world's most profound artistic, scientific geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci. When Christie's put da Vinci's 16th century masterpiece Salvator Mundi up for auction in the fall, it was bought for a figure that outdistanced any other artwork in the past. How do you, in any event, put a price on such a rare, historical, masterful work of art? One that should be housed in a prestigious national gallery of art in a world capital, to be viewed by the masses.

Now, to be viewed privately by one man, MbS.

Christie's Auction House