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It’s good to be a princess! You can run up a £15 million (US$24.7 million) shopping bill and then refuse to pay it due to "diplomatic immunity"!
One of the most senior members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, Princess Maha al-Sudairi, is claiming diplomatic immunity in France after running up unpaid shopping bills of more than £15 million including £60,000 on designer lingerie.
She has ignored her furious debtors and locked herself in her £2,500-a-night suite at the George V Hotel in Paris.
When a royal aide was approached about settling the underwear bill he replied: "I’m afraid we can’t go around settling bills for the Princess’s knickers."
Princess Maha, whose husband, Prince Nayef, is interior minister and second-in-line to the Saudi throne, is said to have spent millions on designer clothes, jewels and other luxury products in the French capital over the past year. Her weekly dry cleaning bill alone was said to be £30,000.
Every time the Princess and her entourage visited a shop a representative would offer staff an embossed document stating "Payment to Follow".
Link – via Arbroath | The BBC reports that she has paid up after a judge ordered bailiffs to confiscate the knickers
Not content with allowing old men to marry underaged girls, a Saudi Arabia judge is doing one better in promoting equal treatment of womenkind in the Kingdom:
Husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly, a Saudi judge said recently during a seminar on domestic violence, Saudi media reported Sunday.
Arab News, a Saudi English-language daily newspaper based in Riyadh, reported that Judge Hamad Al-Razine said that "if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment."
Update 5/11/08 – Clarification: it’s not the same judge that ruled that the marriage between a 58-year-old man and the 8-year-old girl was legitimate – Thanks seefish3!
