The political prince

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Roula Khalaf, FT Syndication Service
As allegations that Saudi Arabia's Bandar binSultan was paid $1.0bn (£506m) from Britain's biggest weapons contract reverberated around the world, the wily, flamboyant man was nowhere to be found. He dropped out of sight weeks before, sparking rumours he had taken refuge in his palatial home in Aspen, Colorado.
His reason for the low profile, according to diplomats, was that he was already in trouble with his boss, King Abdullah, having delivered diplomatic messages to the US that were not exactly in line with the monarch's wishes. It was only last week that the prince was finally spotted in Morocco. Around the same time, the Saudi media published its first words on the scandal alleged in the British press, and only to print the prince's passionate denial of any personal gain.
Not that the bribery allegations in the 20-year £43bn al-Yamamah contract would have come as a shock to many Saudis. In an absolute monarchy flush with petrodollars, where the line between state and royal finances is blurred, arms deals are assumed to carry lucrative commissions. Moreover, the former ambassador to the US and now national security adviser who is celebrated abroad for his diplomatic acumen has long been seen at home as a symbol of royal excess as well as submission to the US, the main issues that breed popular resentment.
It did not help his image that he declared in a post-September 11 2001 television interview: "If you tell me that building this whole country, and spending $350bn out of $400bn, that we misused or got corrupted with $50bn, I'll tell you 'Yes'. But I'll take that any time . . . This happened since Adam and Eve . . . this is human nature."
The problem for Prince Bandar, however, is that the allegations came at a time when a new king, who took the throne only two years ago, has been seeking to clamp down on corruption and curb royal family privileges. The claims would not have been particularly welcome to the prince's father, Crown Prince Sultan, the long-serving defence minister recently confirmed as next in line to the Saudi throne. "All these allegations are not new in Saudi Arabia. The only thing that surprised people was that the figure was so big," says one Saudi analyst. "What really matters here is whether the king still deems that he trusts Bandar."
A master of intrigue and a financier of covert operations for decades, the 58-year-old Bandar is no stranger to controversy. Cocky and shrewd, he developed a talent for arms deals at an early age. A fighter pilot who trained at Cranwell, the British Royal Air Force college, before joining the Royal Saudi Air Force, his first diplomatic mission was to Washington in 1978 to lobby Congress for the sale of F-15 aircraft to the kingdom, and counter the formidable opposition from the pro-Israeli lobby.
Jimmy Carter, then US president, could not see at first how a young air force major would be effective in securing the F-15s deal, but soon understood. In the prince's recently published authorised biography, he says:"I didn't see Bandar every day but I had a feeling [he] was basically living in the White House."
Three years after the F-15s sale Prince Bandar assembled a powerful support group of leading US companies to secure approval for the even more controversial sale of Awacs aircraft to Saudi Arabia. But it was the failure to win the 1985 Saudi request for more F-15s and anti-ship missiles that sent him to Britain's Margaret Thatcher, with whom he sealed the contentious al-Yamamah contract for Tornado aircraft.
The prince's arms deals earned him the confidence of King Fahd, who had taken an early interest in him, despite the fact that he was the illegitimate son of King Fahd's brother Sultan's liaison with a servant. After the Awacs deal, Prince Bandar became military attaché at the Saudi embassy in the US, and was later promoted to ambassador.
For the next 22 years, he managed the kingdom's most important strategic alliance, a marriage of convenience, based on oil and security, between the US and the religiously conservative kingdom. He gained unparalleled influence. So close were his ties to the Bush family, particularly George H.W. Bush, that he was nicknamed "Bandar Bush".
He proved of enormous value to the US when he channelled Saudi petrodollars into American-sponsored covert operations, including funding Nicaragua's Contras and the Arab fighters who battled the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (and eventually created the monster of al-Qaeda). He was called upon by the king to negotiate the end of the 1975-1991 Lebanese civil war and he worked with Nelson Mandela (one of the prince's great admirers) on a resolution of Libya's Lockerbie case. "The more dramatic developments generally involve Bandar," says Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Riyadh. "He has been the super-diplomat for Saudi Arabia who has handled much of the work with great powers."