The Saudi Royal family has long been accused of not paying their bills, but few have acquired the reputation of Maha al-Sudani, the former wife of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Nayef ben Abdel Aziz. The princess was stopped trying to flee the Shangri-La hotel in Paris at 3:30 am without paying her six million euro ($7.4 million) bill. It is hard to sneak out of a hotel with an entourage 60 people.
The police and the Saudi ambassador were called in. The princess invoked diplomatic immunity and was able to leave her not-so-humble abode. She previously walked out on a bill from fashion company Key Largo which went to court to get payment on the 89,000 euros owed them.
That is about the amount she owed in lingerie from 2009. She racked up €70,000 (£60,000) in undergarments from O Caprices De Lili store. She also walked out on “fashion chain Dior, jewellery outlets Chaumet and Victoria Casal, and at least one luxury hotel.”
Diplomatic immunity increasingly makes headlines for its misuse to forgive flagrant legal violations, including that vital diplomatic function of fishing with a permit.
I find it fascinating that the Saudi routinely cut the hands off people who steal items from stores, but the Royal family attempt to steal millions without being subjected to Sharia law.
Source: AFP
i like that Curious, “cheney on bath salts”. he not only shoots you in the face, he eats what he shoots.
Late last night I turned on NPR and hit a BBC interview in mid-conversation. Didn’t know who was being interviewed but he was obviously American (accent). The guy had to be somewhere in the Mid-East and was not a journalist. I was praying he was NOT one of our diplomats. You couldn’t believe what this guy was proposing…he couldn’t wait to get us into Syria and we should have done it sooner, by ignoring Syria we were ensuring that the whole region was going to blow up. It was Cheney on bath salts. Finally, the interview ended and the BBC told us who this guy was. Are you surprised he was some “ex CIA bureau chief”?
Blouise, Is the action in Wisconsin keeping you busy lately? Was that not you that knew “every lock that ain’t locked when no ones around”* when the Capitol building was off limits? 🙂 I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a good outcome tomorrow..
*ala Roger Miller
Nate Awrich, good catch!
When I read the headline, I wondered why she would stop trying. After all, even in Saudi Arabia, they say, “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.”
While I was in college I worked at a restaurant named the Rubaiyat. Waitresses were not unionized in those days. If someone walked out on a check, it was deducted from the waitress’s pay. So I had a party of six one night that I thought might be trying to walk out — and if you pop the check on them too early and try to collect it, of course, you’ve blown your tip completely — and I had to go to the bar to get a drink order, and couldn’t keep them in my sites for a minute, and when I got to the table, sure enough, all gone. I put down the drinks I was carrying and ran out to the parking lot where they were getting into two separate cars. I made a scene; I screamed and hollered and threw stuff all over the parking lot — we’re talking about a $60 dinner fare fee in 1968, so you can imagine what that worked out to from my salary — and finally I forced one of them back into the restaurant to pay.
I never saw them at the Rubaiyat again. I think they wouldn’t have kept trying to do that again. They would have “stopped trying.”
Dredd,
Yep….. We have been going after the wrong criminals…..courtsey of the Bush Crime Syndicate……
Is Steve Rattner one of the bad guys? (I don’t have TV)