McKinsey Claims It's 'Horrified' After Saudi Dissident Report Made Public

McKinsey & Company issues a statement claiming it is ‘horrified by the possibility, however remote, that it could have been misused’ after The New York Times reports the firm’s 2016 report identifying three Saudi dissidents had been weaponized by Mohammed bin Salman’s regime. A McKinsey spokesman states: ‘We are horrified by the possibility, however remote, that it could have been misused. We have seen no evidence to suggest that it was misused, but we are urgently investigating how and with whom the document was shared.’ The firm insists the austerity report was an internal document based on publicly available information and not prepared for any government entity. However, this response rings hollow given the documented consequences: one identified dissident (Khalid al-Alkami) was arrested, another (the Ahmad account) disappeared from Twitter, and Omar Abdulaziz had his phone hacked and family members imprisoned and tortured, with his younger brother having teeth pulled out and others waterboarded and electrocuted. McKinsey’s claim of being ‘horrified’ contrasts sharply with the firm’s continued lucrative relationship with Saudi Arabia - in the months following Jamal Khashoggi’s October 2 murder, McKinsey’s Saudi revenue actually increases over the previous year. The statement exemplifies corporate crisis management prioritizing reputation protection over accountability, with McKinsey refusing to acknowledge how its ’neutral’ analytical work inevitably serves the strategic interests of authoritarian clients. The firm’s professed shock at potential misuse demonstrates willful blindness to the obvious risks of providing intelligence on regime critics to absolute monarchies with documented records of repression.