Saudi Arabia freed Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and several of the kingdom’s most prominent businessmen from detention, clearing out the Ritz-Carlton hotel that served as a jail for the country’s elite during a controversial crackdown on corruption.
Prince Alwaleed, the billionaire chairman of Riyadh’s Kingdom Holding Co who owns stakes in Citigroup and Twitter, on Saturday returned home after reaching a settlement with authorities, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.
He will remain at the helm of his company, the official said, declining to provide the other terms of the deal.
Waleed al-Ibrahim, head of a major media firm, and retail billionaire Fawaz Al Hokair were also freed after agreeing to deals, another government official said.
The prince’s release came just hours after Alwaleed told Reuters reporters in an interview that he expected to go home soon and retain control of his company, calling his detention a “misunderstanding” and expressing support for the kingdom’s rulers.
With the suspects’ names and evidence against them never officially disclosed, the detentions raised concerns about transparency among foreign investors, who are vital to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify the economy away from oil.
The departures from the hotel mark the end of the first phase of Prince Mohammed’s anti-corruption campaign, which shook the kingdom when it was launched in November. Hundreds of suspects were arrested, including some of the country’s richest men and its top economic policymaker.
Officials have said the government expects to reap more than US$100 billion from settlements with detainees in exchange for their freedom. Others have been transferred to prison to face trial, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Also released after agreeing to settlements were Khalid al-Tuwaijri, head of the royal court under the late Saudi King Abdullah, and Prince Turki bin Nasser, who was involved in a massive arms sale that led to corruption probes in the UK and the US, one of the government officials said.
Several of those released from detention earlier appear to have returned to their lives as usual. Among them is former finance minister and minister of state Ibrahim al-Assaf, who led Saudi Arabia’s delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“If they can just go back to their old jobs, it would appear that the campaign was just a warning signal and an effort to raise money,” said Gregory Gause, a professor of international affairs and Saudi Arabia specialist at Texas A&M University. “If that is all that it was, I wonder if anything will change.”
The identities of the detainees and some of the allegations against them were leaked to media, but few details have been provided on their cases or on the settlements many have reached since then.
The allegations against Prince Alwaleed were never formally made public, although a senior official told reporters at the time of his detention that he was accused of money laundering, bribery and extortion.
Alwaleed maintained his innocence in his interview with Reuters, saying that all his dealings had been appropriate and that it was “very important to come out of this clean and pure.”
The senior official said he could not confirm or deny if the prince had been found innocent.
“Settlements don’t happen unless the accused acknowledges violations, and documents that in writing and pledges that he won’t repeat them,” the official said. “This is the general principle of all who were detained in corruption cases recently and not only Alwaleed bin Talal.”
The purge has pleased some Saudi Arabians by showing that Prince Mohammed’s economic shake-up is affecting the wealthy as well as the poor, said Tom Coghlan, director for the Middle East and North Africa at K2 Intelligence in London.
However, observers should not “underestimate the anger among the Saudi elite,” Coghlan said. “There is a significant flight-of-capital risk.”
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