A sweeping net of arrests ordered by Saudi Arabia's new Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman netted  both the kingdom’s biggest business investor, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and the biggest rival to the crown prince’s power: Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah. 

Prince Alwaleed's arrest in particular caught the attention of news media around the world - he is often called the Middle East's Warren Buffett, and has investments in dozens of companies as varied as Citigroup and Twitter. The set of arrests was described by the Saudi administration as an anti-corruption effort, and it has consolidated the 32 year old Crown Prince's power in the kingdom, as he now controls access to the king as well as all the security services. The move may however unsettle the same investors the prince has been trying to attract to put money in Saudi Arabia's economy. The immediacy and lack of transparency in the arrests has raised questions about the motives.

The Saudi Arabia media however, immediately lauded these arrests - the royals have long been perceived as incredibly profligate, using the kingdom's oil wealth to enrich themselves and abscond abroad with large amounts of public money. Large yachts, vacation houses in London and Europe, and multiple high-end sports cars have been de rigeur among the Saudi royalty, raising resentment among the kingdom's people.