Saudi investment summit set to start despite boycott over slain journalist

Saudi Arabia brushed off a Western boycott over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as it prepared to launch an investment conference on Tuesday that has been overshadowed by the withdrawal of dozens of top business and government leaders.

Hundreds of bankers and company executives are still expected to join officials at a palatial Riyadh hotel for the Future Investment Initiative (FII), an annual event designed to help attract billions of dollars of foreign capital as part of reforms to end Saudi dependence on oil exports.

But while last year’s inaugural conference drew the global business elite, earning it the informal title “Davos in the Desert”, this year’s event has been marred by the pullout of more than two dozen high-level speakers following an international outcry over Khashoggi’s killing.

Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.

After two weeks denying any involvement in his disappearance, Riyadh on Saturday said Khashoggi died during a fight in the consulate. Later, a Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold.

The weeks of denial and shifting explanations have strained ties between the West and the world’s top oil exporter.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and senior ministers from Britain and France pulled out of the event along with chief executives or chairmen of about a dozen big financial firms such as JP Morgan Chase and HSBC, and International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde.

Reuters