RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s finance minister said on Wednesday that cash settlements from an anti-corruption campaign would net “not significantly less” in 2019 than the 50 billion Saudi riyals ($13.3 billion) collected in 2018.
Mohammed al-Jadaan also said in a Reuters interview that construction giant Saudi Binladin Group, in which the government took a roughly one third stake under the campaign, would soon have a “normal board” with family members and representatives of government ownership.
He added that the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, has no role in a ministry-owned company that is managing assets seized through settlements with dozens of Saudi elite detained last year under the corruption purge.
The anti-corruption campaign was part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s push to transform an oil-dependent economy, long plagued by graft, that must now cope with lower crude prices.
King Salman in March ordered the establishment of specialized departments in the public prosecutor’s office in order to accelerate the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases, and the public prosecutor had said that the campaign would work its way through lower-level offences.
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