Authoritarian regimes aren't as unitary as people think they are - in reality you have multiple power bases and factions to keep happy (and they have their own family offices).
Furthermore, we live in a globalized world. In 2024, almost every country is dependent on international investors bringing in liquidity. Graft is fine, so long as execution happens.
This means you have multiple different firms joining in these kinds of infra investments. Some are international investors (eg. Citigroup, HSBC, Jardins), some are regional investors (eg. SNB, SAB), some are family offices, and some are the government itself.
The international investors are used to maintain international credibility, the regional investors are used as fixers by the international investors, the family offices are those regionally prominent members who can make or break procurement, and the government investment funds that act as the lubricant to manage all these different factions.
Basically, these investments are used to not only show off regional power, but also pay off regionally prominent factions via Family Offices or minority ownership.
This happens from Saudi Arabia (eg. Neom) to Japan [0] to South Korea [1] to Poland [2]. This is very common in newly developed countries as well as developing countries (eg. CCDI's crackdown on land corruption in China, the Odenbrecht scandal in Brazil, the various Adani linked scandals in India).
> as in generate business for the company, sell off the company to external investors
There's no reason to. Once a connected company executes successfully on large regional projects, they can become international players. This is what happened to Reliance in the 2000s, Adani in the 2010s, Odenbrecht in Brazil in the 1990s-2000s, Polimeks in Turkiye in the 2000s, Wanda Group in China in the 2000s, etc.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-19/japan-s-k...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-indic...
[2] - https://www.oecd.org/corruption/poland-s-fight-against-forei...
