Techs favorite royal Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has been arrested in Saudi Arabia

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Tech’s favorite royal — Prince Alwaleed bin Talal — has been arrested in Saudi Arabia

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In a move sure to shock the business world, Saudi Arabia last night announced the arrest of at least eleven princes, including renowned billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, as part of a sweeping corruption investigation.

Prince Alwaleed controls the investment firm Kingdom Holding and is one of the world’s richest men, owning or having owned major in satellite TV networks, as well as in News Corp. (a stake it has since mostly sold), Citigroup (shares of which it has owned since 1991), and a growing number of tech companies.

The prince and Kingdom Holding, of which he owns 95 percent, first invested $300 million in Twitter in 2011, two years before the company went public. In 2015, he invested another $50 million to increase his ownership in Twitter and, as of last year, remained one of the company’s largest shareholders.

In 2013, Kingdom also acquired 2.5 percent of China-based retailer JD.Com, which went public on the Nasdaq the following year and whose shares have roughly doubled since.

Prince Alwaleed and Kingdom further acquired a stake in the car-hailing company Lyft early last year, buying some of the shares of its earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund.

The prince and his other members of his investment company also announced in March 2015 that they’d sat down with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and the company’s chief strategy officer, Imran Khan, in 2015 about a possible investment in the company, though several months later, a source close to the prince said Kingdom had no plans to invest.

In an unexpected twist, beleaguered condiments maker Hampton Creek said it restocked its board last month after its former directors left, and Prince Alaweed is reportedly among its new board members. It isn’t clear whether the prince has provided Hampton Creek with any funding. Bloomberg noted in a report that the prince is a animal rights activist. Hampton Creek makes a vegan mayonnaise and is said to be working on lab-grown meat.

According to the New Time Times, the arrests appear to be a move to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a son and the top adviser of King Salman, who had announced the creation of a new anti-corruption committee — headed by the crown prince —  just hours before the arrests were ordered.

According to the Times, the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh was subsequently evacuated, possibly to house the arrested royals, and the airport for private planes shuttered, presumably to stop anyone from trying to flee the country.

Last year, the prince joined a number of other billionaires in signing up for the “Giving Pledge of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett; among others to sign up at the time were Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff; the three cofounders of Airbnb (Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk); and Intuit founder Scott Cook.

As the Times notes, it’s unclear whether Saudi Arabia’s corruption committee might seek to confiscate any of Prince Alwaleed’s assets, estimated to be $32 billion.

Featured Image: Jordan Pix/Getty Images

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November 5, 2017 at 03:20AM