Where Does the Oil Money End Up?

What have the Arabs done with the money earned from their oil fields?  If you only read the sensational press, you would think the nouveau riche oil barons have done little but indulge their whims.  Many of the tales have been outrageous and amusing – from the Saudi Arabian princes who casually gamble away millions in a single evening in European casinos, to the sheik who tried to buy the Alamo as a birthday present for his son. 

The largest portion of surplus oil money has been invested in the US, usually behind two or three layers of companies and negotiators to conceal the source of the money.  And since the US government does not know how much Arab money is involved in the economy, it has no means for adequately identifying or controlling those investments. 

The general Arab rule is to keep financial holdings just below the level at which disclosure to the US Securities and Exchange Commission is required.

Muslim Money in Many Sectors of American Business & Government

In the past, Arab oil money has been loaned in amounts of billions of dollars to such US corporations as AT&T, IBM, Dow Chemical and Kimberly Clark.  Arab oil money has been invested in American real estate, apartments, hotels, shopping centers, tourist resorts, land, banks and various financial institutions.

Arab oil money has been offered in the form of loans to major US firms, including Lockheed.  Most of OPEC investment in America is in the US government itself.  A significant amount of OPEC investment has been in US Treasury securities.  

At what point could Arab governments make threats of financial and oil disruption that, if carried out, would severely damage the economies of the US and other Western nations?  What pressure might be brought to bear on companies doing business with, or largely owned by, Arab governments?  What might the result be if Arab money was suddenly withdrawn from American financial institutions and corporations?  Those are questions worthy of serious consideration.

Muslim Concept:  “No Muslim should be answerable to a non-Muslim”

The above is a deeply rooted concept of Islam.  What happens, then, in a company where the controlling interest suddenly falls into Muslim hands?  And isn’t that the intent of Muslim investment – to gain control so that no Muslim is answerable to a non-Muslim?

What happens if top management is replaced with Muslim personnel who are accountable only to one another in the corporation?  It is not inconceivable to envision the day when a company might require its personnel to convert to Islam to win a Middle Eastern contract.  The West makes a keen separation between business and religion.  Those in the OPEC nations do not.