Alwaleed, the Saudi billionaire prince caught in crackdown, had slammed Trump
Dubai — Saudi Arabia’s Alwaleed bin Talal — the billionaire tycoon arrested in an antigraft crackdown by his cousin Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — is no stranger to controversy and making headlines. Ranked among the richest men in the world, the 62-year-old investor is the grandson of two of the Arab world’s most high-profile historic figures: King Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, and Riad al-Solh, Lebanon’s first prime minister. Prince Alwaleed first burst into the business-meets-politics scene in the late 1980s, when he began building what was to become a global empire of banks, luxury hotels and media holdings. Over the next decade, the prince cultivated an image as a canny investor, proponent of Saudi modernisation and, eventually, staunch critic of Donald Trump. In 2015, he slammed Trump on Twitter for his rhetoric during the US presidential campaign, calling him a "disgrace to America" and urging him to drop out. In his response, Trump ridiculed him o...
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