Expatriate Executives Flee Saudi Arabia’s Bad Bosses - WSJ
In the summer of 2020, two videogame companies cancelled sponsorship deals with Saudi Arabia’s planned city-state of Neom following fan complaints about the country’s human-rights record. Neom Chief Executive Nadhmi al-Nasr called an emergency meeting on a weekend and asked his communications team why it hadn’t warned him this might happen.
“If you don’t tell me who is responsible,” Mr Nasr said, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting, “I’m going to take a gun from under my desk and shoot you.”
Colleagues later consoled a woman who broke down crying, these people said. Most of the people in that meeting have since left Neom, part of an exodus of foreign staff, according to current and former employees.
Neom is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s most ambitious project, a group of futuristic technology-driven communities with its own laws across an area the size of Massachusetts that the 36-year-old leader hopes will one day feature flying cars, robot dinosaurs and a giant artificial moon.
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