Why the World’s Largest Megaproject Collapsed | WSJ

We have looked at the internal financial documents, all this to know how and why the largest construction project in the world collapsed, and what is coming for Linium.The Lion became the core of the NEOM project.This is more than the total area of each building in the city of New York.It is the size of two skyscrapers, two floors taller than the Empire State Building, spanning millions of people.The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wanted this project to be something unprecedented.It looks like you're in space where gravity laws don't apply.

When I saw that for the first time, It was in this.Certainly, the moment of reckoning had to come at some time.Over the past nine months or so, the moment of reckoning has come.What our reports show is that construction works in all major projects have stopped or begun to slow down.We have spoken to many of the former employees who worked on the project, and their expectations, and the expectations of many others, is that this project will be unpaid.The Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is the sovereign fund that controls Finium, He said that no projects in Nium have been canceled.

Instead, he described it as a reorganization of priorities.It is difficult to get a clear picture of the internal financial affairs in Nium.The General Investment Fund publishes its financial data annually, but it does not separate the specific figures for Nium.What it showed us is some of the major losses, or what is called a depreciation of value, or the loss of assets in their main financial projects, which is considered one of the largest.46 .8 billion Saudi Riyals were spent in 2025, and 74 .7 billion in 2024.This is equivalent to 12 billion dollars per person.

The country has already spent more than 50 billion dollars on Neum, and will spend another billion just to finish the project.So how did we get here?In the beginning, and to formulate what are our ideas, we got a document that exceeds 2000 pages that explains all these ideas.There is an artificial moon.There is an idea written by Muntazahi, Jurassic Park Entertainment.They also had plans to control weather.

This is the plan of the artificial moon, and it is called to make it the largest institution in the world.They set an example for a possible partner such as NASA.The ideas of the consultants became the main plans for many of the main sub -projects.The largest sub -project was The Lion.Then there was Turogena, which is a ski resort in a barren desert mountain, where it is assumed that there is snow for three months a year, while today the snow falls only slightly and melts quickly.There was Oxagon, which was supposed to be a developed port city for logistic services and modern manufacturing of all kinds.

Then there was Sindala, which is a luxurious resort on an island targeting the owners of giant yachts.Early on, and to achieve this, the employees realized that they had a mountain of fears that they would need to overcome.We have received a document that specifies a large number of these disasters, and they range from the environment to the architecture and architecture to the construction capacity, and here is one main one.The cost will be astronomical.As for me, when I saw this, we were told that there are people inside who see what seems very obvious from the outside,which is that this project was on a level that could not be implemented.

You can see in the latest photos of the satellites that they have actually accomplished a lot of work.In Thalien, you can see that over the past few years, they took an area of more than 70 miles of land and dug a trench for what was supposed to be the underground railway and infrastructure of the project.Then there is something called the Marina.It is a huge basin that the yachts were supposed to enter, where the first three parts of the line would be built.They dug 150 feet deep under the surface of the sea, then they started to put huge limestone pillars 150 feet deep in the ground.Then at the end of last year, that work stopped completely.

If you look at Torugina from above, you can see the giant plan of the place where the lake would be built.There is also this strange structure that is completely flat, and at the end of this lake is the place where they used to spend all this money to build a dam that would simply contain huge amounts of coral and silt.The Wall Street Journal published a series of videos of workers working in Trugina in the latter days before work stopped and was used in this gliding village, where it was assumed that there was a glider.Then one day, all these workers were told the same thing.which is that the building has stopped.We are leaving in a chair.

You can see that a huge amount of work has been done and then simply stopped.The golf course, which was green one day, turned to brown.And you have another side of the island where the work did not simply happen at all.It is a place that was supposed to include the Four Seasons Hotel by this time.A main point about Neom is that it is the project of Muhammad bin Salman.He is the developer and he is the banker, and he is the president of the board of directors of Neom, and he is the president of all the boards of directors of these projects.

projects within Nioum.He is the Chairman of the General Investment Fund, which is funded by Nioum, and he is the one who manages the country.This structure affected everything in Nioum and led to many problems.We have reviewed an internal audit of the project and found a deliberate manipulation of the financial data of Nioum.by the employees.This was a common practice, according to former employees we spoke to.

We have reviewed the financial data of Lam Trugina from a 2023 document submitted to the Trugina Board of Directors, and what it showed was that the cost of the project was huge and reached 39 billion dollars.This was a problem because the Crown Prince wanted all projects to be profitable.Therefore, when the project's employees submitted suggestions and came out with ideas, they needed to show that the project would bring its fruits to the Saudi state over time.What did the employees do?Therefore, we can see in this presentation that in order to meet the increasing costs, They also increased the expected revenues that they were going to get from everything in the project.A luxurious tent site was expected to get $216 per night, so they adjusted that to $704 per night.

Suddenly, the hotels became much more profitable, despite the fact that the conditions on the ground did not change from one month to the next.This was just a small part of Niyoum, but it bore great implications for what was happening in the project as a whole.Niyoum was initially described as a $500 billion project, but a black -listed presentation to the board of directors by the Wall Street Journal showed that the capital required to build Niyoum until its final state by the year 2080 was due to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, at that time the country as a whole.A spokesman for Niyoum at the time said that the newspaper violated the interpretation and distorted the numbers,but he refused to provide more details.What we heard from Newm is that they are focusing on Oxagon.

Starting from the end of last year, Newm began to cancel many of the projects that were planned to be implemented.In recent months, we have begun to see a public recognition of this.The executives are talking in joint calls about the end of their work in Niyoum.A project like Niyoum is now in decline and is no longer on the agenda.Two Niyoum contracts have been cancelled in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.The main structural problem in Niyoum was simply the word of truth.

Muhammad bin Salman had a fantastic vision of what Niyoum should be, but the people around him did not tell him that it was impossible.It is the story of many things, the story of Icarus, and the story of the new emperor's clothes, where the fantastic vision shocked the Crown Prince with the financial reality.