Ambitious young Saudi prince playing a very dangerous game
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s attempt to clear the house comes against a background of heightened tensions between Riyadh and its main regional rival Iran
THE arrests began last Saturday night and by morning Saudi Arabia was gripped by a purge unprecedented in its history. Since then more than 200 people – among them members of the Saudi royal family – have been rounded up in what authorities have cast as a sweeping investigation into the kingdom’s deeply entrenched corruption problem but others suspect is a power play by the brash Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, son of King Salman.
The accused include 11 princes and 38 officials, military officers and tycoons. They are currently being held at five-star hotels, including the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh.
Though Saudi officials have not publicly disclosed the names of those detained, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men and something of a maverick figure in the kingdom, is widely reported to be in custody. So too are two sons of the late King Abdullah, including Prince Miteb, who until last weekend had overseen the powerful National Guard.
As the kingdom continued to reel from the news this week, the Saudi attorney general’s office said it estimated at least $100bn (€85bn) had been misused through “systematic corruption and embezzlement over several decades”. An estimated 1,700 individual bank accounts have been frozen.
Ordinary Saudis have long grumbled of rampant corruption in their country, an absolute monarchy marked by cronyism and where the thousands that comprise the various branches of the royal family are seen as above censure.
Over the past nine years, the kingdom has not escaped the effects of the global financial crisis, with those not having the privilege of royal blood – and the lavish stipends it confers – bearing the brunt of austerity measures. When oil prices plummeted three years ago and Saudi Arabia introduced new taxes and slashed subsidies in order to adapt to new realities, it was ordinary Saudis who felt the pain.
Enter Mohammed bin Salman, popularly known by his initials MBS, the young prince in a hurry. In June, 32-year-old MBS was promoted to crown prince after serving as defence minister. His ‘Vision 2030’ blueprint has been presented as a bid to modernise the kingdom’s economy and society while allowing the House of Saud to maintain its hold on power. If implemented in full, it will amount to the most dramatic economic transformation of Saudi Arabia’s economy since oil was discovered there in the 1930s. Among other things, the blueprint includes a plan to bring more women into the workforce (the recent decision to lift the ban on women drivers was also seen as part of MBS’s push for reform).
But while supporters of MBS insist tackling corruption – and this week’s round-up – is part of the Vision 2030 plan to pull Saudi Arabia away from its dependence on oil revenue, others point out that the graft investigation has been selective in its targeting so far, going after several who may be perceived as a possible threat to MBS. With King Salman now in his 80s, his ambitious son is laying the ground for his own ascent to power, sidelining potential rivals and reshaping alliances to suit his own interests.
HIS attempt to clear the house comes against a background of heightened tensions between Riyadh and its main regional rival Iran. King Salman and his son have taken a notably more belligerent path than their predecessors, as seen in Saudi’s intervention in Yemen (bound up in the wrangle with Tehran), the ongoing blockade of Qatar, and the strange case of Saad al-Hariri who surfaced in Riyadh at the weekend to announce his resignation as prime minister of Lebanon (also caught up in the Saudi-Iranian power play).
There are, however, risks to MBS’s strategem in a country where change usually comes slowly through painstaking efforts to forge consensus and not in the short, sharp, shock manner of the past week. The arrests and the freezing of bank accounts – along with the billions contained within — have rocked the kingdom’s dense patchwork of financial holdings and made investors jittery. Domestic upheaval on top of escalating tensions with Iran is not a recipe for market confidence.
The king-to-be may have bitten off more than he can chew with this latest audacious step in his bid to remake the Saudi Arabia his grandfather created.