 RELATED STORYThe sultan, the prince and the missing $14bn of government oil wealth |
GLENN: All right. Well, let me tell you a sad story that the liberals will like because it involves tragedy. It involves somebody struggling in today's economy. His name is Jefri. Poor little Jefri. He's a brother. Brother was successful. Jefri had to make it out on his own. He had a paltry salary and now he can't make it. He's the younger brother of the sultan of Brunei. Now, the sultan, of course, been ruling the country since the 1960s. Using money from the prince, the brother, bought a few houses around the world. He had -- what, you don't have a couple of cars? Okay, he had 1700 exotic sports cars and luxury cars. He had a 180-foot yacht which he named after a woman's -- well, it starts with a T, ends in "Its." That's just the name of the boat. That's just what's on the 180-foot yacht, it's got that on the back, okay? Just that. And his two utility boats that, you know, they can put down on the water and they can zip around and take you in to shore and stuff named Nipple 1 and Nipple 2. So this guy is very, very classy. He currently has three wives and 18 kids. So he's struggling. He's struggling. He's got 18, 19, 20, 21, 20 -- counting his, 22 mouths to feed. It's craziness. Some of the kids are from previous wives. So he's also got, you know, exes that he's paying for and, of course, he's also, you know, got women that he didn't marry that he had children with. But that's -- let's not get bogged down in all the facts. People make mistakes, okay? Who are you to judge? Now, the prince for many years had a good job. He was working hard. He was the finance minister of Brunei. Kind of a bad move for Brunei but, hey, they didn't know. Stop judging these people.
Prince Jefri not shy with the state's money. He spent $475 million on a few Rolls Royces and he spent $78 million at the Italian sports car company and $900 million at a British jeweler, later bought the jeweler out for $385 million because you never know. Hey, I show up and you're not open. What am I supposed to do for jewelry. You know what I mean? Let me just -- how much for all of it?
In 1993 he bought the Helmsley Palace Hotel here in New York for $200 million. He and the sultan of Brunei split up the royal air fleet of 10 jets which included a Boeing 747 and an Airbus A-340. He gave his badminton coach and acupuncturist $1.8 million each because, I mean, badminton coaches and acupuncturists are hard to find. You know what I'm saying? But he didn't stop there. He got caught up in this, you know, keeping up with the Joneses. He amassed a world class art collection. He used states funds to buy a Manet, not to be confused with a Monet for 24 and a Renault for $20.5 million. Now, the prince says the sultan was aware of all this spending. He said, you know, I've been spending it for several years, you know. I built a beachfront house, you know, some place I could kick back on the weekends and it had a sports complex in the beachfront house, and you wouldn't want to build it without it. But he said the sultan knew I built it, you know, and my allowance was only $20,000 a month. You can't build a house like that, you know, for -- you can't build a house for $20,000 a month.
I hate to point it out to Jefri, but you can but they usually don't have sports complexes in it, beachfront. He said, "I thought our government, I thought our government spending was out of control," you know, this according to the sultan. And, you know, it might have been. I mean, he spent 2,159 years worth of his allowance just on Rolls Royce cars.
So how did it all go wrong? You're saying Glenn, cut to the chase. I mean, I've heard this story, sure, but where did it go wrong? Well, in the late 1990s depressed oil prices led to a financial crisis in Brunei. I'm not a financial guru but it might have been the $900 million in jewelry that, you know, might have hurt the economy a bit. And so Brunei hired Arthur Andersen. I hate that guy. Him and his buddies come in. "Oh, Arthur can find the money." And they wanted him just to comb through the agency's, the investment agency books to see if they could dig anything up. I think it was probably pretty tough to figure out what was going on there, you know, with a $475 million spent on Rolls Royces. But the older brother got a little upset and called for the prince's ouster and said, hey, we're going to fire you, you know, how dare you use state funds for all of this. And, of course, the sultan has every right to be upset. I mean, he's living a humble lifestyle himself while his prince of a brother is spending all the dough and, you know, he watches his brother build a beachfront palace. All the while he's trapped in his 1788-room bungalow that just the house covers 49 acres. So can you imagine? You know, you see your brother living it up like that.
So they are embroiled now in a court battle to get Prince Jefri to give all the money back but he says, you know, I don't have it anymore. And the prince is saying, look, all I need is a few hundred million dollars and a couple of my houses. I mean, is that too much to ask for? Really? Shouldn't the government of Brunei bail him out? Okay, sure, he made a couple of bad investments, but he was lured in by the teaser rate on the Rolls Royces.