Two weeks ago, the glitzy Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh was the site of an international conference promoting Saudi Arabia as an investment destination, with over 3,000 officials and business leaders in attendance.
Now the hotel is temporarily serving as a luxury prison where some of the kingdom’s political and business elite are being held as part of a crackdown on corruption that may change the way the economy works.
By detaining dozens of officials and tycoons, a new anti-corruption body headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seeking to dismantle systems of patronage and kickbacks that have distorted the Saudi economy for decades.
The names of detainees have been equally stunning: Nasser bin Aqeel al-Tayyar, founder of the Al Tayyar Travel group; billionaire Saleh Kamel; and Bakr bin Laden, chairman of the huge Saudi Binladin construction conglomerate.
But it is a risky process, because the crackdown is hurting some of the kingdom’s top private businessmen -- leaders of family conglomerates who have built much of the non-oil economy over the past few decades.
“He couldn’t have put them in the jail,” the report quoted a senior official as saying. “And he (Crown Prince) would have known that. So this was the most dignified solution he could find.”
The arrests are being viewed widely as an attempt by the Crown Prince to neuter any opposition to his lightening ascent to the pinnacle of power. But admirers see it as an assault on the endemic theft of public funds in Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy where the state and the ruling family are intertwined.