Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler is using the oil-rich kingdom's sovereign wealth fund to bankroll vanity projects linked to a host of rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. A 93-page report from the New York-based group describes how Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has asserted control over the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which now manages assets worth around $925 billion compared with $84 billion a decade ago, AFP reports. It accuses the 39-year-old of seizing companies and assets from elite Saudis rounded up during high-profile anti-corruption operations beginning in 2017, the same year he became first in line to succeed his father King Salman.
Some of those companies, it says, later ended up under PIF control. The report also ties PIF-owned companies to abuses at some of the most prominent megaprojects under Vision 2030, Prince Mohammed's programme to diversify the Saudi economy. Those include evictions at NEOM, a planned futuristic mega-city in the Saudi desert, and demolitions to make way for luxury shopping and tourism developments in the coastal city of Jeddah.
"Through the PIF, Crown Prince Mohammed has consolidated unprecedented state economic power under his sole decision-making with few, if any, constraints on how he deploys his nation's wealth meant to benefit the entire Saudi people," the report says. "Saudi Arabia's most marginalised people -- migrant workers, rural communities, poor and working-class residents -- have borne the brunt of abuses st.