Lebanon has been rocked by a bizarre scandal in which a poor auto mechanic posed as a Saudi prince to deceive the nation’s elite — telling MPs how to vote in the prime minister’s election and arranging meetings between politicians at the behest of a sheikh. Here’s how the con unfolded.
Lebanon has been rocked by a bizarre scandal in which a poor auto mechanic fooled the nation’s elite into doing his bidding.
For months, Moustafa al-Hasian posed as a Saudi prince and spoke to many politicians, guiding their votes in parliament and arranging their meetings with powerful people at the behest of Khaldoun Oraymet, an influential Sunni sheikh in the country, according to the Financial Times.
Al-Hasian, who posed as Saudi prince ‘Abu Omar’, lobbied in favour of Nawaf Salam in last year’s prime ministerial election and convinced some MPs to change their votes in his favour — though Salam’s victory was assured anyway.
Al-Hasian was so convincing that a parliamentary candidate gave Oraymet’s son a car before taking it back. Another politician allegedly asked al-Hasian to help his son win equestrian medals in Saudi Arabia.
After the scam unravelled in recent weeks, the authorities detained al-Hasian and Oraymet and charged them with fraud, blackmail, influencing politicians and their voting decisions, impersonation, and disturbing Lebanese relations with Saudi Arabia.
The episode has laid bare how foreign influence works in Lebanon and how open Lebanese politicians are to joining hands with foreign powers —real or perceived— to benefit themselves and harm rivals.
“The real victim of Abu Omar is us, the Lebanese people, because the Lebanese people are led by politicians who can be easily manipulated,” Imad Salamey, a political scientist at the Lebanese American University, told FT.
How auto mechanic & sheikh conned Lebanon’s who’s who
Al-Hasian and Oraymet ran their scheme through a British phone number.
As per the FT’s report, al-Hasian used to talk to politicians and Lebanese elites on the phone and his accent from the Wadi Khaled area in the country’s north apparently resembled the Saudi dialect to the untrained ear. That worked in their favour.
But it was not just backbenchers who fell for the con. A former prime minister, Fouad Siniora, also fell for it.
The FT reported that Siniora put al-Hasian on the phone with former MP Bahia Hariri so the “Saudi prince” could offer condolences for the death of her husband.
In the most outrageous instance, hours before Lebanese parliament voted for a new prime minister last year, a group of MPs received a call from ‘Abu Omar’. Over the speaker, they heard the purported Saudi prince warning them against voting for Mikati. He said these were “instructions from the Saudi royal court”.
The MP who took the call from “Abu Omar” told fellow MPs that he often spoke to the “Saudi prince,” one of the MPs part of the call told FT.
Ahmed al-Kheir, one of the parliamentarians part of the call, separately said that the fake Saudi prince’s intervention worked and some MPs in their group changed their votes in favour of Salam.
‘Saudi prince’ scam lays bare foreign influence
The scam carried out by al-Hasian at the behest of Oraymet “exemplifies how much the political elite have surrendered to the decisions of foreign powers: they’d do anything just by hearing the Saudi accent,” Sami Atallah, founding director of the Beirut-based The Policy Initiative think tank, told FT.
“They’re so desperate for signals and nudges from their benefactors that they’re not even verifying that information, let alone challenging or questioning it,” Atallah further said.
Salamey said the scam preyed on Lebanon’s sectarian political system, where rival factions of Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and Christians jockey for overseas patrons to cement their authority at home. Among Lebanon’s Sunni politics, Saudi Arabia has long held sway.
“Most of the political elite pride themselves on being backed by foreign states like Saudi Arabia or Iran or the United States, and they use this to impose or emphasise their power within their own community first and then vis-à-vis other sectarian communities,” said Salamey.
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