Officials at foreign embassies say that they are seeing more Saudi nationals inquiring how to renew second passports and getting them issued for their children.
Foreign direct investment into Saudi Arabia last year was a fifth of the level of 2016 – $1.42 billion versus $7.45 billion – after international companies sold stakes in local businesses and brought in less money, according to a United Nations report last week.
Central bank data show money being moved abroad. In the fourth quarter, when the arrests began, personal transfers by Saudis jumped 46 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. They remained elevated in April -- the most recent month for which data is available -- when they were 27 percent higher than during the same month last year.
The kingdom for decades was a place where royals were free to spend lavishly while clerics made sure the country retained its ultra-conservative brand of Islam.
A drop in oil prices and slowdown in growth spurred the urgency for new policies that transition the economy away from petrodollars. Gross domestic product fell 0.7 percent last year, though growth is expected to pick up to 1.5 percent this year, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists, after oil prices got back to above $70 a barrel.
The prince may be using the activists as an example to other interest groups who want to pressure the government into making concessions, according to diplomats in Riyadh.
It’s a “warning to Saudi subjects in no uncertain terms that the state is the sole arbiter of policy, and interlocutor with foreign media, international organizations, and diplomats,” Kristin Smith Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, wrote.
Partly driving this fear is how the government handled its crackdown on corruption in November. A total of 381 suspects and witnesses were called in for questioning and detained at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh. The government released most in exchange for settlements that officials say total more than $100 billion; 56 were kept in custody “due to other pending criminal cases” or to continue investigations, the prosecutor said in January.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said the government’s corruption purge was good for business and it would create “a level playing field.” “It will be your quality and your price and nothing else that will determine how successful you are,” he said.
Indeed, some of the new areas opened up by the crown prince, like entertainment, are booming. Some big Saudi families in particular are investing again, according to one foreign investor with interests in the kingdom.