The Vanishing Sheikh

Hello again, dear reader.

I know, I know. I've been quiet. In my defence, I've been buried in a chapter I'll be showing you shortly. It's a bombshell. Possibly the bombshell.

In the meantime, meet the third character in this story.

You've already met Henrik and Malte, and we'll be spending a good deal more time with them. But today the floor goes to His Excellency Sheikh Saud Abdulaziz F. A. Al-Thani, a member of the Qatari royal family, and he has the surname to prove it. The family tree and the other good bits can wait for another day. Today I want to show you his particular superpower: vanishing.

I've brought you three screenshots. Other men my age collect wine.

Let's take them in order. You're a careful reader. I've come to rely on it.

December 2025. Al Masdar Investment at the absolute height of its dealmaking. The page says: boutique investment firm under the private office of Sheikh Saud Abdulaziz F. A. Al-Thani. And directly beneath it: over one billion USD in assets under management.

June 2026. Someone, somewhere, appears to have grown uncomfortable lying at that particular volume, and the billion is gone. Fine. These things happen.

August 2026. No sheikh in the name. No sheikh in the description. No billion, obviously. And the website has left the building as well. What's left is a boutique firm of some description. Fine. There's one on every corner.

So. Since June, the sheikh has been erased from everything. As though he'd never been there at all. And neither had the billion. Small spoiler, because I can't help myself: it never had been. More on that later.

Why? Why scrub the name off every surface? Somebody should have mentioned the Streisand effect: the harder you press something down, the further it travels.

So go ahead, scrub. It won't take, and here's the catch.

Sheikh Saud Al-Thani is a co-owner of Al Masdar Investment W.L.L. Not a silent one. He's a director, "manager with full and absolute authority", with the signing rights to match. His signature is on contracts. He's on the video calls. He's in photographs touring the offices and hotel lobbies, meeting prospective partners, promising to invest sums of truly breathtaking size.

None of that comes off with a delete key.

I'll leave this one without a direct conclusion. You'll reach your own, the way you always do, according to whatever your moral compass happens to be made of.