Many of the Saudi businessmen and royal family members who were arrested in November 2017 after being accused of corruption have been released. But not Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, the 71-year-old Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire. In fact, no body knows where he is being held right now.
Forbes once described Al Amoudi as one of the richest black persons in the world. According to the BBC, he immigrated from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia as a teenager and became a Saudi citizen in the 1960s. His fortune is estimated at $ 13.5 billion and his company employs some 40,000 people. His friends say he had a close relationship with Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who was defense minister and crown prince until he died in 2011. Al Amoudi had benefited from his friendship with the late crown prince in expanding his business empire in Ethiopia and around the world. In the 1980s, Al Amoudi’s companies built underground oil storage facilities, and his companies entered various fields such as construction, engineering, furniture and medicine.
In Ethiopia, according to US State Department documents that leaked to WikiLeaks, since the 1990s Al Amoudi’s companies were granted preferential treatments by the government to conduct businesses ranging from mining to tourism.
The late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz had instructed Al Amoudi to launch massive agriculture projects in Ethiopia to ensure dependable and cheap supply of rice and meat for Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian farmers were evicted from their land and their land were given to Al Amoudi’s huge rice farms. The highest quality cattle, sheep and goats are being exported to Saudi Arabia from Ethiopia at the cheapest possible prices, keeping Ethiopian farmers poor while Al Amoudi, his partners and their friends in the Ethiopian government became multi-millionaires overnight.
Al-Amoudi is a major supporter of Ethiopia’s detested, extremely corrupt ruling party. He had used his enormous resources to lobby the U.S. Congress and State Department to overlook human rights atrocities in Ethiopia. Today, both the Ethiopian and U.S. Government are quite about Al Amoudi’s fate.
Al Amoudi had looted and plundered Ethiopia for over 20 years. He deserves to be brought to justice. But as an Ethiopian citizen and a human being, he does not deserve to be banished without a trace. Every human being, no matter how terrible that person is, has the right to due process. The Saudi Government should either bring him to court, or release him.
