Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is 42 years old and has three wives. He is the youngest king in the Arab world. His father abdicated in 2013 and Tamin knew what to do with the inheritance. Experts in the family saga of the Al Thani family, as the dynasty that governs that small but powerful geography is called, say that Tamin is responsible for modernizing the state of Qatar. Until Tamin, Qatar was an ancestral nation trapped in its religious dogmatism. But after the Emir’s arrival, Qatar began to expand. Qatar came out to the world. He went out to buy a piece of the world.
The emir, according to Forbes data, owns a personal fortune of 2 billion dollars. But its buying impulse does not come from there, but from the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, the product of sales of LNG (liquefied gas) to half the planet. As Doha trades its gas reserves with the world, Qatar is serious business in the haven of world powers. In economic terms, long before the World Cup, the Arabs have been consolidating unrestrained expansion that supports business of all forms.
Global affairs and heading south
At the end of the last centurysymbols of the new country have emerged, such as the Al-Jazeera chain and the airline Qatar Airways. The foundations of the Qatar Investment Authority have been laid, the sovereign wealth fund that extends its arms to all continents.
Today the royal family holds shares on the London Stock Exchange, in the Volkswagen and Porsche car companies, has acquired Harrods stores, Tiffany jewelers, the Miramax studio in Hollywood and participates in companies such as British Airways, Barclays and Credit Suisse banks, among others, many others. It is estimated that in the United Kingdom alone, where the current emir and a large part of the royal family were educated, more than 50 billion dollars have been invested. They own part of Paris Saint Germain and therefore Messi and Mbappé.
Tamin is a character of the moment. Until the World Cup in Qatar, it was not easy for the West to differentiate one emir from another. But Messi, Argentina, the coronation took place. That Sunday that Argentines will never forget, Tamin First he embraced his close friend, Mauricio Macri.
The video went viral. Montiel nails the rigor of consumption and Tamin runs to embrace the former Argentine president and current head of the FiFa Foundation. He hugs him, squeezes him, squeezes a Macri shocked by the victory. Macri looks like a vegetable, delivered into the arms of a thin, tall and solemn man behind his investiture. Then it was time to hand the cup to the best in the world. First he placed the black cloak which symbolizes the autonomy of the emirate.
The joy factor
It has also been said that Tamin “bought the World Cup”. But many things are said… What is concrete, perhaps, is that Tamin arrived in Argentina long before becoming a world reference. He came from the hand of a close friend, with whom he shares time and a growing anecdote. Gastón “El Gato” Gaudio has become much more than his connection to South America. Years ago Gato himself confessed: “I’m a close friend of the Emir of Qatar, I do things with them, but nothing formal”. In 2016, Gaudio brokered an advertisement for Qatar Airways, the emblematic flag line that also controls the royal family, to arrive as a Boca shirt sponsor.
Those were the times of the nights for a walk through San Telmo. Like the one where they closed United States Street. Tamin wanted to eat lamb licks. They had told him that the Brigade had the best food in Buenos Aires and they had gone to that grill. They are data of color that operate as a membrane in front of what is truly transcendent: Qatari investment in natural resources. Dead Cow, without going any further. The Qataris have kept 30% of Exxon’s operations on the ground.
They are interested in shale oil as much as they are in lithium. Lithium is perhaps the coveted pearl for the not so distant future. A future of electric cars, electric and combustion-free vehicles. Lithium is the new gold in provinces such as La Rioja, Catamarca and Jujuy. But in the middle of last year, Río Negro confirmed the discovery of lithium under its soils. They are on the agenda of the army of lobbyists who pursue Tamin in every raid disguised as luxury tourism.
Always Patagonia
But if there is a place where people have been talking about the “Qatari” for a long time, that place is not Buenos Aires, but Bariloche. The landing of the Emir in Patagonia should be dated to around 2017. As often happens, first the myth of a powerful presence is installed and finally the veil of a real estate transaction is lifted. It happened in Baguales, 50 kilometers from Bariloche. Since the purchases are made in “border security” areas and due to land law a foreigner cannot be the direct owner of land of these characteristics in the country, the purchases are made through complex but legal corporate formations.
To create the paradise of Los Baguales, where elite skiers with lots of money can indulge in the royal pleasure of being alone in nothingness, the emir and his partner Gaudio had to join forces with the Belgian group Burco, which manages the gated community of Arelauquen in Bariloche. Abdulhadi Mana A Sh Al-Hajri, from Doha, Qatar, and tennis player Gastón Norberto Gaudio created Baguales Acquisitions SA. This is how they obtained approval to purchase a 4,500-hectare field.
Baguales is the name with which Burco commercially exploited the “Baguales Allowance”, a kind of high steppe at an altitude of 1,700 meters which is loaded with snow for a good part of the year. Caviar for skiers. It is the same area of Cerro Carreras, which appears on the maps as the property of the Burco group and the Alto Foyel ranch. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the Burco group has been offering the exclusive heli-skiing service in the area now under the control of Gaudio and the Emir. It is estimated that in total the Emir owns, through a network of different companies, a total of 28 thousand hectares.
Right there, the company has put together a system of luxury lodges, which intrepid skiers can connect for ski days truly isolated from it all. “They all want to work for Baguales. They are good payers, good employers. There is nobody here in the South who doesn’t also want to be a supplier,” they say in the area.
In movement
Tamin and his entourage, including Gaudio, stayed at the Llao Llao hotel last week. The emir had returned from a long pleasure trip, with stops first in Rio de Janeiro, then in Punta del Este and finally in La Plata. They had made that tour on two sophisticated chartered boats in Niteroi, Brazil. The Emir let himself be photographed fully dressed as a Western tourist at the Parador La Huella, in the Uruguayan seaside resort. After alighting at the port of La Plata, an infrequent but perhaps ultra-discreet landing site, the contingent’s next appearance was in Bariloche.
There was one morning the mysterious Qatar Airways Jumbo 747 and the Llao Llao literally taken over by the emir’s entourage. They paid $3,600 a night for the Emir’s luxury suite. A trinket. They were going to visit Mauricio Macri, who rests 80 kilometers from there, the closed neighborhood of Cumelén, of Villa L’Angostura. It was another meeting, about which very little was known. But this gives the pattern of something true: the Emir feels part of this part of the world and nothing indicates that his interests are static. He’s not going to stand still.
Source: Clarin
