RDIF chief says business community positive about reforms in Kingdom
The head of one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest investment partners, the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), has reassured the global community about doing business in the Kingdom in an interview with Arab News in Davos.
Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Kirill Dmitriev, the fund’s chief executive, told Arab News that stories about the apparent hacking of Amazon boss Jeff
Bezos’ phone did “not look plausible at all. There are no named sources and no real evidence.
“We in Russia have some experience of phone hacking and this has all the signs of being fake news put about by enemies of the Kingdom who are opposed to the historic reforms of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.” Dmitriev, whose organization has channeled investment into Saudi Arabia and partnered the Kingdom on billions of dollars-worth of joint ventures, said the people he had spoken to in Davos remained in favor of the opportunities presented by the Vision 2030 strategy to diversify away from oil dependency. “Lots of people here are positive about the changes going on in Saudi Arabia, both from the West and from Asia. I’m surprised the Western press does not give the full picture about what is happening in Saudi Arabia,” he added.
While in Switzerland, the RDIF announced a deal to invest in an online tourism platform that would benefit from increased Russian tourism, especially by members of Russia’s big Muslim minority, as well as other potential visitors to Saudi Arabia..