https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-rise-of-mohammed-bin-salman-11597931772
The models arrived first. Boats carrying some 150 women, from Brazil, Russia and elsewhere, docked in the summer of 2015 at Velaa Private Island, an opulent Maldives resort. Upon arrival, each woman was driven in a golf cart to a clinic, tested for sexually transmitted diseases and settled into a private villa.
The women were due to spend the better part of a month with their hosts, several dozen friends of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for a party marking his ascent. A 29-year-old prince with a taste for opulence, a hunger for money and a need for power found himself with an abundance of all three.
Prince Mohammed had worked doggedly for a year, outmaneuvering rivals and easing the path for his septuagenarian father Salman to assume the Saudi throne. After Salman took the crown in early 2015, he delegated extraordinary powers to Mohammed, who consolidated control of the military and security services and began upending the sleepy kingdom’s oil-dependent economy.
By that July, Mohammed wanted a break. His privacy-obsessed entourage booked the entire Velaa resort for a month, at a cost of $50 million, according to people familiar with the trip. Staff were banned from bringing cellphones with cameras. The American rapper Pitbull and the South Korean pop star Psy performed. The Maldives party was described by several people in attendance, including some involved in its planning.