Joining the exodus of high-profile attendees from a prestigious investment conference in Saudi Arabia, Maxim Gerbut, founder and CEO of a Ukrainian startup PassivDom, has also decided to pull out of the event in protest at the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Gerbut was invited to be a speaker at the event, along with the heads of other top tech companies from around the world. He would be the only representative of Ukraine at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, dubbed “Davos in the Desert” for its lineup of prominent speakers and held under the auspices of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“Last night I had one of the most important conversations in my life,” Gerbut wrote in a post on his Facebook page on Oct. 19. “Rory Jones from the Wall Street Journal and I talked about the murdered Saudi journalist, the war in Ukraine, Oleg Sentsov, and everything that people usually turn a blind eye to while doing business with countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia.”
Gerbut’s startup PassivDom builds innovative houses that save energy, and for him, Gerbut wrote, standing up against the oppression of free speech and human rights was just as important as fighting for a better environment.
U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared over two weeks ago after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. While Turkish authorities have leaked some ghastly details about his murder, Saudi officials initially denied any involvement. However, they later admitted that the journalist had died during an interrogation. According to the Washington Post, 11 out 15 suspects named by Turkey have ties to the Saudi security services.
Khashoggi’s last column for the Washington Post titled “What the Arab world needs most is free expression” was published post-mortem on Oct. 17.
In a rebuke to the Saudi regime, a range of companies and guests from Google, Uber, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Ford, CNN, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Financial Times, to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Britain’s International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, have canceled plans to attend the summit.
