CEO Shuts Out Saudi Arabia’s 100-Mile Skyscraper After Alleged Deaths of Multiple Workers

Natural Selection

The head of the world’s biggest and most ambitious construction project has resigned amid shocking allegations about the death toll.

As i The Wall Street Journal reports, Nadhmi al-Nasr, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s futuristic city project Neom – which includes The Line, a building planned to be 100 miles long – has abruptly left the role he has held since 2018. new Channel 3 The documentary alleges that more than 21,000 foreign workers died during construction, a number that does not even account for the number of indigenous people who were displaced and disappeared during the construction of Neom.

Sources with information about the Shakeup executive have confirmed to this newspaper that he has left this position these days, although it is not yet clear why the Neom executive left and whether it is related to the recent allegations.

In an email viewed by The WSJNeom’s board named Aiman ​​al-Mudaifer, head of real estate and the Saudi kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, as al-Nasr’s successor. In that email, Neom’s governing body said the move was “a strategic decision by the Board and an evolution.”

After the budget

While the fear of all those deaths hangs over the project, insiders have spoken to them The WSJ he said the Public Investment Fund is now stepping in to take over after repeated delays and ballooning budgets in a project that seems very difficult to implement.

An experienced architect, al-Nasr oversaw the construction of both major oil fields for the state-owned Aramco oil company and a university campus that adjoins the Red Sea.

But Neom’s ambitious plan — more than 100 miles of buildings are also expected to include a soccer stadium bid for the 2026 World Cup, a ski resort in the desert, and a floating business district — is more than anything else. on the Ex-CEO’s CV.

As the sources of this newspaper note, the other two senior officials of Neom, a couple of Westerners who were the school’s ministers. The WSJ revelations of corruption earlier this year, they also left their positions in the past months. Taken together, these departures suggest that the Saudis are cleaning house — and that the people who die to get there could matter less than the kingdom’s mission.

More on Saudi Arabia: More than 1,300 Muslim Pilgrims Die in Extreme Heat