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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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The news that the circles linked to the Saudi royal family are planning to withdraw or already have withdrawn up to $200 billion from the US financial and real estate markets made the headlines these days. The financial circles in the US though remain very skeptical for such kind of information although they remain vigilant on the possibility of any sudden and unexpected transaction of big scale. The real problem so far as many see it isn't that the Saudis have already taken their money out of North America. The problem is that they prefer to place their fresh money in other financial centers and even have started to think about some diversification of their American assets.

But let's first begin with some history notes. After 9/11 the American administration began a long process of finding how exactly the terrorist cells have been financed on the American soil. Then one after another came to the public the stories about the Islamic financial funds and charities, which on one hand, have been financed by influential Arabs and, on the other hand, have been linked to some persons considered to represent a security threat to the United States.

In December 2001 we predicted that the war against the international terrorism financial tentacles could limit the freedom to do business. We also said that the FBI profile of the supposed terrorist donors could force many Arab multimillionaires to take their money from the US and to put it into safer places around the world .

Maybe such withdrawal has taken place in limited quantities in the last 8 months explaining at least partly why the common European currency Euro has gone up against the US dollar.

So far Riyadh officially denounces any rumors that royal family members have planned to cut their business ties with the United States. But the fact that they have to denounce the rumors speaks for itself; there are talks amid the financial circles on Wallstreet about the Saudi plans and even the official position can't clear the sky from the clouds. The Saudi and Arab assets in the US and North America as a whole include also large portfolio of real estate, which can't be sold so quickly as the assets on the stock exchange. Thus many fear that as a precautionary measure the Arab financial circles can turn their real estate assets into more movable stuff. So far there are no indications for such moves but if they happen they could be considered as a first alert for further and massive withdrawals.

As we already told in our previous article there aren't so many options for the Saudi and Arab millionaires if they choose to turn back to the United States and the first among these options is Europe. The other options Japan, the Arab counties, the small tax heavens around the world are more theoretical than practical solutions.

Personally I'm not afraid that Saudi will leave the United States for Europe because their capitals in America are the price to be paid for their kingdom and for their regime to exist surrounded by hostile and greedy countries. What I'm afraid for is that facing a dilemma to stay or not to stay these capitals will prefer to stay but the price for this will be paid from the United States. Just consider what can be bought in the United States having these hundreds of billions of dollars? Of course I don't mean buying real estate, some goods and stocks. I mean something that money usually couldn't and shouldn't buy at all.

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