Pandora Papers: While overseas assist poured in, Jordan’s King Abdullah funnelled $100m by way of secret corporations to purchase luxurious US, UK houses

By Will Fitzgibbon
Jordanian protesters took to the streets – once more – demanding an finish to corruption and poverty within the aid-dependent Middle Eastern monarchy. Masked police broke up the demonstrations and jailed critics of the nation’s leaders.
Still, the folks chanted for change.
Finally, in a bid to defuse the disaster, Jordanian authorities in June 2020 trumpeted a crackdown on hidden wealth, designed to assist stanch the movement of an estimated $800 million a yr in another country.

Then-Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz mentioned the crackdown was particularly wanted to answer COVID-19’s influence on the state’s funds. Jordan would monitor each final dinar that residents had hidden in tax havens, the prime minister mentioned; No offshore wealth was past scrutiny.None, it appears, besides the king’s.
A trove of leaked paperwork obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists exhibits that the nation’s long-ruling monarch, King Abdullah II, has secretly owned 14 luxurious houses within the United Kingdom and the United States, bought between 2003 and 2017 by way of entrance corporations registered in tax havens. Their worth totals greater than $106 million.

The houses embody a home in Ascot, one in every of England’s costliest cities; multimillion-dollar flats in central London and three luxurious flats in a fancy in Washington, D.C., with panoramic views of the Potomac River.
Also included are three adjoining beachfront houses beneath reconstruction at Point Dume, a fancy enclave close to Los Angeles. One, a seven-bedroom mansion on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, was purchased in 2014 by way of one of many king’s shell corporations, Nabisco Holdings (no connection to the cookie firm), for $33.5 million.

Advisers to the 59-year-old monarch, who awards an annual prize for transparency in his identify, spared no effort to hide his actual property holdings, the information present. Accountants and attorneys in Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands shaped shell corporations on the king’s behalf and concocted plans to defend his identify from public and even confidential authorities registries.
On two paperwork, BVI company directors on the agency Alemán, Cordero, Galindo & Lee, higher referred to as Alcogal, checked bins to declare that nobody linked to one of many king’s corporations was concerned in politics – regardless that the king has the facility to nominate governments, dissolve Parliament and approve laws.
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Writing to ICIJ on the king’s behalf, attorneys denied something improper about proudly owning houses by way of offshore corporations. The king just isn’t required to pay taxes beneath Jordanian regulation, the attorneys mentioned.
Experts acquainted with the area say the timing of the purchases, if made public, would doubtless have alienated many Jordanians and the tribal leaders who assist maintain Abdullah in energy. Most of the U.S. and U.Ok. actual property offers – and 6 of these for greater than $5 million – passed off since 2011, after Arab Spring protests that toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and posed the primary critical risk to the Jordanian monarchy in generations.
Pandora Papers: how a lot did the King of Jordan spend on property purchases within the Pandora Papers? (Source: icij.org)
Jordan is among the poorest nations within the area. It has nearly no oil of its personal and valuable little water. The kingdom is determined by overseas assist to assist its personal folks and to accommodate and take care of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Last yr alone, the United States gave Jordan greater than $1.5 billion in assist and army funding, and the European Union agreed to supply the dominion with greater than $218 million to melt the blow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Jordan doesn’t have the kind of money that other Middle Eastern monarchies, like Saudi Arabia, have to allow a king to flaunt his wealth,” Dr. Annelle Sheline, an skilled on spiritual and political authority within the Middle East, mentioned in an interview with ICIJ. Sheline, a analysis fellow with the Quincy Institute in Washington, D.C., added, “If the Jordanian monarch were to display his wealth more publicly, it wouldn’t only antagonize his people, it would piss off Western donors who have given him money.”
Experts say Abdullah, whose topics mock the best way he speaks Arabic with an English accent, has little room for error.
This yr, Jordanian police detained 16 folks, together with a member of the royal household, over an alleged plot to oust Abdullah. Prince Hamzah, the king’s youthful half brother, was quickly positioned beneath home arrest for his alleged function within the coup try. In a furtive video issued after a go to from the nation’s intelligence companies, Hamzah denied being a part of any conspiracy.

“I am not the person responsible for the breakdown in governance, for the corruption and for the incompetence that has been prevalent in our governing structure for the last 15 to 20 years and has been getting worse by the year,” Prince Hamzah mentioned. “A ruling system has decided that its personal interests, that its financial interests, that its corruption is more important than the lives and dignity and futures of the 10 million people that live here.”
Jordanian officers accused Hamzah of a conspiracy that threatened nationwide safety. Hamzah didn’t accuse Abdullah of wrongdoing.
U.Ok. attorneys for the king mentioned Abdullah has essential respectable safety and privateness causes for holding property in offshore firms that don’t have anything to do with tax evasion or another improper goal. The king has by no means misused public monies or overseas assist, the attorneys wrote, including Abdullah’s wealth comes from private sources. Abdullah cares deeply for Jordan and its folks and acts with integrity and in the very best pursuits of his nation and its residents always, the attorneys mentioned.
The attorneys mentioned that many of the offshore corporations both not exist or usually are not associated to the king and that among the properties recognized by ICIJ as belonging to him didn’t. Attorneys declined to clarify what the king considers inaccurate as a result of alleged privateness and safety issues for him and his household.