Saudi Arabia’s Ties to American Consulting Firms Will Come Under a Senate Microscope

Saudi Arabia’s influence on American consulting firms will come under a microscope next week as a key Senate subcommittee furthers its investigation into the proposed merger between the American PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf. In an increasingly rare moment of bipartisanship, the top Democrat and Republican on the Homeland Security Committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, Senators Blumenthal and Johnson, will launch a hearing next week on the Kingdom’s stonewalling and its involvement with four consulting firms. The firms are Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey and Company, Teneo, and M. Klein and Company. The subcommittee announced the investigation in a bipartisan letter in which Messrs. Blumenthal and Johnson called on the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, to cease his lawsuits aimed at halting the testimony of consulting executives and the production of documents to the committee. “The Subcommittee has been examining the extent to which foreign powers may be using commerce within the United States as a tool of foreign influence,” the senators wrote to the PIF leader. “What is unprecedented here is the PIF’s repeated attempts to hamper this Subcommittee’s inquiry. The subpoenas to the PIF Consultants were issued after months during which you, the PIF, and the PIF Consultants repeatedly declined to voluntarily testify or provide any substantive, responsive information or records to the Subcommittee.”On Tuesday, the subcommittee will convene to review the Saudi fund’s, and consultant’s, lack of compliance and consider further action on the matter. The hearing is titled “Foreign Influence in the United States.”In November, the Saudi fund sued all four of the consulting giants in a Saudi Arabian administrative court to stop them from producing documents for the subcommittee. A lawyer for the fund, Raphael Prober, sent a letter to Messrs. Blumenthal and Johnson on January 12, saying that his client would not comply with the subcommittee’s demands and their lawful subpoenas. “We respectfully urge you to reconsider your position in this matter,” Mr. Prober wrote. “As detailed below, your demand for documents would require the Advisors to violate lawful orders issued by the courts of Saudi Arabia, protecting documents that are prohibited from disclosure under Saudi law.”“The PIF is an instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Probert continued. “Under the Penal Law on Dissemination and Disclosure of Classified Information and Documents (the ‘Penal Law’), both the PIF itself and those who do work for it — including the Advisors — are subject to restrictions on the disclosure of classified documents and information.”The attorney called the Senate investigation “unprecedented,” claiming that “no committee of Congress has ever sought to compel the production of information in these circumstances.”Mr. Prober did not respond to a request for comment. Messrs. Blumenthal and Johnson have been investigating the proposed deal since it was announced publicly in June 2023. In July, the PGA Tour’s chief operating officer, Ron Price, and a PGA board member, Jimmy Dunne, appeared before the committee as part of that investigation. “Today’s hearing is about much more than the game of golf,” Mr. Blumenthal said at that hearing. “It is about how a brutal, repressive regime can buy influence — indeed even take over — a cherished American institution simply to cleanse its public image. It’s a regime that has killed journalists, jailed and tortured dissidents, fostered the war in Yemen, and supported other terrorist activities.”On the same day, the subcommittee released preliminary investigation findings that showed PGA and Saudi officials had met several times in Italy, New York, and California to discuss the deal without any PGA officers knowing. When Messrs. Blumenthal and Johnson sought testimony from the PIF governor himself just a few weeks later, they were rebuffed. The four consulting groups were intimately involved in helping the PGA Tour and LIV Golf move forward with their partnership after helping to negotiate the PGA’s looming deal with a group of billionaire sports team owners known as the Strategic Sports Group. Members of the group include the owners of the Red Sox and the Celtics, John Henry and Wyc Grousbeck, respectively. According to ESPN, the PGA deal with Strategic Sports Group is nearly finalized, and the official merger between the PGA and LIV Golf will come afterward.

Saudi Arabia’s Ties to American Consulting Firms Will Come Under a Senate Microscope

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