The Scoop
At least two senior executives at Diriyah, the $63 billion real estate development in Riyadh, have been detained by Saudi Arabia’s anti-corruption watchdog, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The detentions were made in recent weeks as part of an investigation by the Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority, also known as Nazaha, the people said. At least one executive was subsequently released, and it’s unclear if formal charges have been filed. The probe is ongoing, the people said.
Nazaha, Diriyah, and two of the detained executives didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Diriyah is one of the kingdom’s most prominent projects. US President Donald Trump attended a state dinner there during his trip to the Gulf in May. The group CEO of Diriyah told Semafor at the time that the president was “just amazed” at the scale of the project.
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The detentions are some of the highest profile examples of the kingdom’s efforts to stamp out corruption in recent years. Amr Al-Madani, the former CEO of the Royal Commission for AlUla, a tourism project in northwestern Saudi Arabia, was arrested in January 2024 and accused of abuse of authority and money laundering. It was a rare example of Nazaha providing specific details about its activities.
Saudi Arabia launched a high-profile effort to stamp out corruption in 2017 with the detention of princes, government ministers, and business moguls at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, recovering over $100 billion in assets. The drive continued: Nazaha regularly announces more than 100 arrests a month across government bodies including the Defense, Interior, and Education ministries.
Tackling corruption has become even more important for the country as it looks to stop wasteful or improper spending amid a period of low-oil prices that has pushed the government budget into a deficit for much of the past decade. The country is spending huge amounts on its economic transformation plan, with around $150 billion in contracts awarded in 2024.
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Diriyah, owned by the kingdom’s nearly $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, is one of five so-called gigaprojects central to Saudi’s plan to diversify its economy. It plans to transform a UNESCO heritage site into a thriving tourism and hospitality community, and has remained a government priority even as other projects, such as NEOM, have been scaled back amid lower oil prices.
The site is also set to be home to a $1.4 billion opera house, hundreds of tech and media firms, a golf course designed by Greg Norman, and Armani and Ritz-Carlton branded residences. Its goal is to attract 50 million visitors by 2030 and become home to over 100,000 residents.
Public Investment Fund aims to create around 178,000 jobs through the development, and contribute nearly $5 billion to the kingdom’s economy when the project is done. Originally planned as a 400,000-square-meter heritage site, the development has since ballooned to 14 million square meters.