Hver er Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al-Thani? Hvaðan kemur auður hans?

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al-Thani kaupir 5% í Kaupþingi. Hann er í  Al-Thani fjölskyldunni sem stjórnar Qatar  en emírinn þar er höfuð ættbálksins og hann  á alla skapaða hluti og hann er einvaldur. Það er því sennilegt að fjárfesting fólks af Al-Thani ættbálk sé fjárfesting sem með beinum eða óbeinum hætti heyrir undir emírinn. Hér er grein um Al-Thani fjölskylduna  og hér er grein um Hamad bin Khalifa

Ég sé nú ekki hvernig  nýi Kaupþingshluthafinn Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al-Thani er skyldur núverandi emír í Qatar, hugsanlega er hann bróðir emírsins ?

Meira um emírinn og stjórnarhætti í Qatar:

Emírinn á þrjár konur, 11 syni og 8 dætur. 

Önnur eiginkonan emírsins heitir Sheikha Moza og er hún mjög valdamikil. Hún er gáfuð kona sem leggur mikla áherslu á menntamál og hefur beitt sér í réttindamálum kvenna og barna. Í greininni Al-Jazeera by Hugh Miles stendur þetta:

By the 1980s, when Qatar had become a seriously wealthy country, its Gulf neighbours, Dubai, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, had already had a chance to establish themselves in the region as regional banking and commerce capitals. Unlike the other Emirates, Qatar traditionally had never been a trade hub, so the American-educated first lady, thinking laterally, decided that rather than compete with them she would concentrate on developing Qatar as a regional leader in education. Education has since become an obsession for both the Emir and his wife.
Buying wholesale into the American university system, the educational foundation which she heads paid $750 million for a branch of Cornell University to open a campus in Doha. At present the Weill Cornell Medical College turns out just sixty graduates a year, but, when it comes to royal projects, money is never a deciding factor, and Sheikha Moza has identified a regional demand for quality educational facilities. Virginia University, Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M University and the prestigious American think tank the Rand Corporation have all recently opened branches in Qatar. According to one Qatari academic I spoke with, this has already had a positive effect far beyond anyone's hopes.

Eftir því sem ég hef lesið þá hafa lífskjör almennings í Qatar batnað mjög og stjórnvöldum þar verið umhugað um velferðar- og menntamál og undir velmeguninni stendur gífurlegur olíuauður. En Qatar er einræðisríki:

Although Qatar is often cited today as a paragon of virtue in the Middle East, it is important to keep this claim in perspective. Greater public participation in decision-making is a good start, but Qatar is still not a democracy. But then it is not a police state either: it is an autocratic state subject to the whim of one man, the Emir, who, although fortunately not a tyrant, is unelected, unaccountable and all-powerful. The Municipal Council may decide traffic laws but it does not discuss the military budget or the Emir's personal expenditure.

 

Political parties in Qatar are still outlawed, as is anything that vaguely resembles one: for example, an environmental lobby group, a consumer association or an association of professionals. Opposition is not tolerated and there is still no real debate about how the country is run. In 1998 local Qatari newspapers published a letter from a Qatari religious scholar called Abdul Rahman al-Nuaimi which criticized the emancipation of women in Qatar, one of the government's key policies. Nuaimi wrote that this trend was un-Islamic and that awarding women political rights risked turning them into men. He was arrested and jailed for nearly three years without trial.

Sjeik kaupir 5% í Kaupþingi