Consulting firms keep lucrative Saudi ties
As Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia charmed Goldman Sachs bankers and Silicon Valley executives on a U.S. tour this spring, some of his most trusted lieutenants were taking care of business in Washington.
In a low-key ceremony two blocks from the White House, Saudi officials signed an agreement with Booz Allen Hamilton, a U.S. consulting company, to help train the kingdom’s growing ranks of cyber-fighters.
The agreement would “open great horizons” by improving the skills of the kingdom’s cybersecurity experts, Saud al-Qahtani, a top adviser to the crown prince overseeing the deal, said in Saudi Arabia in a statement to the official press. It did not mention his continuing campaign to silence critics both inside the kingdom and online.
Al-Qahtani was fired last month after Saudi officials linked him to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying he had contributed to an aggressive environment that helped lead to the killing. But while Khashoggi’s death prompted investors from around the globe to distance themselves from the Saudi government, Booz Allen and its competitors McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group have stayed close after playing critical roles in Crown Prince Mohammed’s drive to consolidate power.
In addition to standard consulting work like doling out economic advice and helping burnish Crown Prince Mohammed’s image, they have taken on more unconventional assignments. Booz Allen trains the Saudi navy as it runs a blockade in the war in Yemen, a disaster that has threatened millions with starvation. McKinsey produced a report that may have aided al-Qahtani’s crackdown on dissidents. BCG advises Crown Prince Mohammed’s foundation.
The work is lucrative — the three firms have earned hundreds of millions of dollars altogether on projects in Saudi Arabia. McKinsey’s work in the kingdom grew from two Saudi projects in 2010 to almost 50 the following year and kept accelerating, to almost 600 projects from 2011 to 2016.
McKinsey consultants spread across the kingdom in recent years to advise government agencies such as the Planning Ministry, nicknamed the “Ministry of McKinsey” by some Saudis; the royal court; and a coterie of companies in industries such as banking, media, telecommunications, real estate and energy, internal McKinsey documents viewed by the New York Times showed.
Last year, McKinsey bought a politically connected Saudi consultancy, adding that firm’s 140 employees to more than 300 already in the region.
Its report singling out the kingdom’s prominent online critics drew widespread condemnation when the Times revealed it last month. The dissidents — including Khalid al-Alkami, a writer critical of Saudi policies, and Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi now living in Canada — were described in detail, alongside photos of them.
“Omar has a multitude of negative tweets on topics such as austerity and the royal decrees,” the author, who McKinsey says is a researcher based in Saudi Arabia, wrote in bullet points. Al-Alkami “wrote multiple negative tweets regarding austerity.”
Though McKinsey said the report was prepared for an internal audience, al-Alkami was subsequently arrested, and Abdulaziz said two of his brothers were imprisoned. A third, pseudonymous account was shut down, and it remains unclear what happened to the person behind it.
The crackdown was an early sign of the Saudi government’s extreme measures to quash criticism, which culminated in Khashoggi’s murder.
McKinsey said it was “horrified” at the possibility that its information could have been misused. In a note to former employees, McKinsey said the researcher had published the analysis in January 2017 on an internal system and that it was intended only to “showcase techniques to gauge social media usage and reaction.”