It's easy to feel angry when stories like this come to light.
The Issa brothers — billionaires who built their empire from a single gas station — used a $41 million loan from their own company, EG Group, to buy a luxury private jet.
According to City AM, the loan was facilitated through an Isle of Man-based firm they controlled, Clear Sky 2, and was originally taken out "on an interest-free basis."
Only after auditors flagged the arrangement did the brothers begin paying what the company later described as a "commercial rate" of interest. The loan was no small sum, and it wasn't repaid promptly either, according to City AM.
"In accounts published in June, EG Group said the loan was 'past due' and warned that it would seek to 'exercise its guarantees' to recover the amounts due if the brothers did not pay up by the end of the second quarter of its financial year," the outlet reported.
Only recently did financial documents reveal that the debt had finally been settled "in full."
Even more galling is what the money funded.
The Bombardier Global 6000 jet — emblazoned with a vanity call sign ending in EG — was used for both business and pleasure. City AM reported that it made more than 50 trips between London and the Caribbean in just two and a half years.
Those journeys, each a symbol of materialism and indulgence, come at a steep cost to the climate. Private jets release up to 14 times more carbon pollution per passenger than commercial flights and are used by just a tiny fraction of the world's population.
All of this comes as the Issas' sprawling business empire faces increasing financial strain — including a failing Scottish clean-vehicle investment and a credit card company burdened by high-interest debt.
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Even amid such irresponsibilities, their personal choices reflect the same pattern of excess that drives both inequality and environmental destruction.
Stories like this remind us why accountability matters. When the ultra-wealthy treat the planet like their playground, the rest of us bear the consequences.
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