Imprisoned in style: How Saudi princes coughed up billions in 'luxury jail'

As the Ritz-Carlton reopens after Riyadh used it to detain and probe elite Saudis in an antigraft campaign, questions linger over the rule of law

After being summoned by an aide to King Salman on Nov. 4, a prominent Saudi showed up at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh expecting a royal audience. Instead, armed men took his mobile phone and escorted him to a hotel room. 

“I was told I would be staying here for some time,” the man recalled recently.

Over the next 99 days, the Saudi government would close the Ritz-Carlton as a hotel and detain 381 people there in an unprecedented anticorruption campaign against its most elite citizens.

The Ritz-Carlton reopened on Sunday as a hotel, marking the end of a phase of the crackdown