Records indicate that on 30 September 2009, Good Star agreed to pay $85m to Obaid, which the Seychelles company described as a fee for "brokering services".
He apologised to Obaid, but according to Justo, his friend "went mad", sending him a stream of abuse, via text messages and emails.
In response to questions from the Guardian, PetroSaudi said the payment to Obaid was not a brokerage fee and that the transfer of $33m to Mahony had nothing to do with the PetroSaudi-1MDB joint venture.
As we neared the clinic, another question occurred to Obaid-Chinoy.
To Obaid-Chinoy's dismay, when she screened "A Girl in the River" male viewers often cheered for Saba's father.
The woman, whose name was Saba, survived, and began telling her story, talking first to a local news outlet and to the BBC and then to Obaid-Chinoy.
The idea that the film was a political success, or gave Syria an opening with the Saudis, is "absolute nonsense," according to Nawaf Obaid, a fellow at Harvard University and a counselor to both Prince Mohammad bin Nawaf, the Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former director of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service.
According to Justo, Obaid promised him a salary of £400,000, "millions in bonuses" and the perk of a £10,000-a-week flat in Mayfair, central London.
According to Thoraya Obaid, the UN agency's executive director, the American contribution could have prevented 2m unwanted pregnancies, nearly 800,000 induced abortions and more than 77,000 deaths.The Democrats may also be able to make something out of the torture debate not least because America has sided against its allies and with such champions of human rights as Cuba and Iran.
Yet the event drew Desmond Tutu's daughter Mpho to speak up for women's empowerment and say: "Let us not fear that our individual acts are too small to change 'his-story' into 'our story".' Those who sniff at the idea of stars turning out for a charitable event should listen to Ms. Obaid-Chinoy, who has brought the reality of life in Pakistan to the big screen.
"If people go to jail, the precedent will be set that if you kill a woman in your family, you will go to jail," Obaid-Chinoy says.
