The Al Saud clan that rules Saudi Arabia: The 1.6 trillion dollar family

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There are different parameters to measure the power of a family, but when the surname gives rise to the name of a country, we find ourselves before an unprecedented phenomenon in terms of supremacy.

The modern state of Saudi Arabia created just nine decades ago has its roots in Ibn Saud, patriarch of the

, which in Arabic means "the kingdom of pure origin of the house of Saud."

have succeeded

him in office.

Forbes magazine has calculated

, but it must be taken into account that the family is made up of more than 15,000 members, of whom

.

The best known in recent years are Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud (67), who would have about

and Mohamed Bin Salman (36), the crown prince who would have about 5,000 million dollars and who, according to the CIA, ordered the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and has a more open vision of the already oppressive Saudi society.

The young man likes to enjoy life at full speed.

On one of the walls of his luxury yacht named

, hangs the Salvatore Mundi, supposedly by Leonardo de Vinci, which he bought at auction for 389 million euros.

In this eagerness to conquer and preserve one of the most powerful thrones in the world, bribes, wiretapping of the secret services, assassination attempts and

are the order of the day.

Despite the fact that he has been more accommodating so that women have a little more freedom - they can drive and go to soccer fields - and he is involved in a megalomaniac project called Vision 2030 that aims to turn the country into the economic epicenter that connects Europe , Africa and Asia, some experts say it

.

Saad al Jabri, a former Saudi spy, confessed to the CBS News program that

who tried to end the life of King Abdullah - he succeeded his half-brother King Fahd and he was also King Salman's half-brother - with a Russian poison ring that would not have left a trace.

However, Abdalá died of natural causes.

The latter punished his offspring without shaking his hand.

His daughters Sahar, Hala, Maha and Yawaher lived for more than a decade in a dilapidated palace complex in Jeddah and

.

The FAHD KING

King Fahd in a file image taken in 2001. GTRES

However, of all the Saudi royals, the most interesting for the pink press was King Fahd of Arabia, a close friend of King Juan Carlos I, like his brother, King Salmán Bin Abdulaziz (86) who

.

The arrival in Marbella of King Fahd in summer translated into a constant rain of petrodollars.

He set foot on the Costa del Sol for the first time in 1979 after having ousted the Monte Carlo Casino, which motivated Rainier III of Monaco to want to follow his trail.

For the one who was the only absolutist monarch in Europe, that Andalusian land was no stranger to him since he and Grace Kelly attended the inauguration of Puerto Banús nine years earlier.

to be built in the image and likeness of the White House, so he stayed at the Incosol.

According to the journalist José Luis Yagüe, the first to get a statement from the monarch, as soon as he saw the landscape, he exclaimed:

As Cristóbal Martínez-Bordiú, Marquis of Villaverde and Franco's son-in-law, had already opened a clinic, the mayor of Marbella convinced King Fahd to finance social housing, for which he

.

Over time, the Saudi sovereign built a complex in which Mar-Mar stands out, urbanistically considered the only building with a palace category in the area.

Every time he came, Marbella paid homage to him.

, a gardener charged 3,000 euros a month and

.

The person who recommended the Al Saud to the Costa del Sol was Adnan Khashoggi, a famous arms dealer whose father was the doctor of the royal family.

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