Saudi Purge Sees Senior Princes, Top Billionaire Detained

• Arrests reported hours after anti-corruption campaign revealed
• Sweeping changes also hit national guard, economy ministry

Mohammed bin Salman Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman removed one of the royal family’s most prominent princes from his ministerial role and arrested other royals and top officials in an anti-corruption drive that clears any remaining obstacles to his son’s potential ascension to the throne.

Acting on orders from a newly established anti-corruption committee, headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, police arrested 11 princes, four ministers and dozens of former ministers, the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said. Prince Miteb, son of the late King Abdullah, was removed from his post as head of the powerful National Guards. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men and a shareholder of Citigroup Inc. and Twitter, was among those detained, according to a senior Saudi official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Laws will be applied firmly on everyone who touched public money and didn’t protect it or embezzled it, or abused their power and influence,” King Salman said in comments shown on state TV. “This will be applied on those big and small, and we will fear no one.”

Prince Miteb was replaced by Prince Khaled Ayyaf, according to a royal decree. Before his ouster, Prince Miteb was one of the few remaining senior royals to have survived a series of cabinet shuffles that promoted allies of the crown prince, who is the direct heir to the throne.

Meteoric Rise

King Salman had already sidelined other senior members of the royal family to prevent any opposition to the crown prince, 32-year-old Prince Mohammed, known as MBS among diplomats and journalists, who replaced his elder cousin, Muhammed bin Nayef, in June. That maneuver removed any doubt of how succession plans will unfold following the reign of King Salman, now 81.

“The hardline approach is risky because it will solidify the dislike many powerful Saudis have for the crown prince, but it is likely that MBS succeeds, and emerges from this episode more empowered,” Hani Sabra, founder of Alef Advisory, a Middle East political risk practice, wrote in a note. “We can’t confidently project when a leadership transition will take place, but today’s developments are a signpost that MBS is moving toward the role of king. ”

Changing the head of the National Guard, an institution that’s been controlled by the clan of the late King Abdullah, “is not like changing the minister of oil,” said Kamran Bokhari, a senior analyst with Geopolitical Futures and a senior fellow with the Center for Global Policy. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this leads to greater fissures within the royal family.”

Detaining Prince Alwaleed, a nephew of King Salman, was another surprising development. The prince has, more than once, expressed his public support to the monarch and his son. When Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in 2016, the prince said he was halting plans to invest in the Islamic Republic. On National Day in September, a giant picture of Prince Mohammed was projected on Alwaleed’s Kingdom Tower in Riyadh during a firework display.

In the course of his meteoric rise to power since 2015, the prince has announced plans to sell a stake in oil giant Saudi Aramco and create the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, and has ended some social constraints, including a long-standing ban on female drivers. Women will be allowed to drive in June 2018.

Saudi Arabia, while never a democracy, had been governed for decades by a loose consensus among an extended royal family, who had control over different government agencies. Critics said the system had stifled any attempts to reform the kingdom to reduce the economy’s reliance on oil.