Prince Alwaleed Reveals Secret Deal Struck to Exit Ritz After 83 Days

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has taken a few knocks en route to becoming the richest investor in the Middle East and one of Saudi Arabia’s most recognizable faces. In the 1980s, he went broke. In 2008, during the financial crisis, he lost billions of dollars on Citigroup Inc. But nothing compares with the humiliation he sustained over the past few months. Last November, Alwaleed’s uncle, King Salman, and his cousin, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, engineered a government roundup of alleged fraudsters, embezzlers, and money launderers that landed Alwaleed in Riyadh’s now-infamous Ritz-Carlton hotel. He didn’t leave for 83 days.

I saw Alwaleed in late October, the week before he became a prisoner of the state. We spent an evening at his desert camp chatting about the financial markets and U.S. politics, watching a soccer match on TV, taking a walk through the sands, and eating a late dinner in the cool midnight air. Seven weeks after his release, in mid-March, I returned to the kingdom. Alwaleed had decided to break his silence and grant me an interview on Bloomberg Television.