01. Al-Waleed Bin Talal
Net Worth: 32 Billion Dollars
Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud (born 7 March 1955) is a Saudi businessman, billionaire, investor, philanthropist, and a member of the Saudi royal family. He was listed on Time magazine’s Time 100, an annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world, in 2008. Al-Waleed is a grandson of Ibn Saud, the first Saudi king, a half-nephew of all Saudi kings since, and a grandson of Riad Al Solh (Lebanon’s first prime minister).
He is the founder, chief executive officer and 95-percent owner of the Kingdom Holding Company, a Forbes Global 2000 company with investments in companies in the financial services, tourism and hospitality, mass media, entertainment, retail, agriculture, petrochemicals, aviation, technology and real-estate sectors. The company had a market capitalization of over $18 billion in 2013. Al-Waleed is Citigroup’s largest individual shareholder, the second-largest voting shareholder in 21st Century Fox, and owns Paris’ Four Seasons Hotel George V and part of the Plaza Hotel. Time has called him the “Arabian Warren Buffett”. In November 2017 Forbes listed Al-Waleed as the 45th richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $18 billion.
The previous year, he announced that he would donate his fortune to charity at an unspecified date. Some of the reasons he cited were to foster cultural understanding and empower women.
On 4 November 2017 he was arrested in Saudi Arabia, in an anti-corruption drive, together with, among others, Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim and Saleh Abdullah Kamel. The allegations against Prince Al-Waleed include money laundering, bribery, and extorting officials.
The Saudi authorities have now transferred the prince along with others to the nation’s highest security prison Al-Ha’ir – located south of Riyadh, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed news.
During his detention, Alwaleed is said to have been hung upside down and beaten.
The numbers detained in the Riz-Carlton fell as they gave into demands from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for restitution payments, but Prince Alwaleed is said to have refused to pay the Government £728million.