Arabia. Saïd was attending a ceremony at the prince's house at the time to receive Saudi citizenship by royal decree. To honour his son Saïd established the Karim Rida Saïd Foundation to help disadvantaged children and young people of the Middle East. Saïd moved to Saudi Arabia in 1969. Saudi Arabia lacked much modern infrastructure at the time, and large infrastructure projects were subsequently funded by the rising price of oil in the early 1970s. During this period of time, he founded and invested in companies that supported large-scale infrastructural projects. Saïd was ambassador and head of the delegation of St Vincent and the Grenadines to UNESCO from 1996 to 2018. Saïd also previously served as St Vincent and the Grenadines ambassador to the Holy See. In March 2016, Saïd was told by British banking firm Barclays that he could no longer bank with them, despite having been a long-standing customer; the BBC reported that "The bank is understood to be concerned about holding accounts that are linked to what are described as 'high-risk countries'". In response, Saïd said he would be taking legal action against Barclays. Those proceedings were settled by June 2016. Relationship with Syria Saïd assisted the future Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with securing a place in Britain to study ophthalmology in 1992, and was acquainted with the Anglo-Syrian family of Assad's wife, Asma al-Assad (née Akhras). In a 2012 interview with Charles Moore in The Spectator, Saïd said that he had found Bashar '...civilised, nice, polished', and that he admired Asma as 'a caring person'. Saïd welcomed Bashar's ascension to the Presidency of Syria following the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, feeling it was Syria's 'only salvation. His acceptance speech in 2000 was music to my ears. He said he wanted to reform the legal system, revoke the [now 50-year-old] emergency laws, and fight corruption.' Saïd helped introduce Western politicians and businesspeople to Syria, and helped push for political reform in the country. Visiting Syria in 2011 at the advent of the Syrian uprisings in response to the Arab Spring, Saïd told Asma that 'the winds of change are contagious. Please tell the President to promise free elections. He must be the champion of change.' Saïd was appalled by the resulting Syrian Civil War and was summoned to see Bashar al-Assad in June 2011 as he wished to gauge Western views of the conflict. Saïd