Welcome back to the podcast, bribe, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi. Today we're

talking about Saudi Arabia and more specifically Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS. My guest is the co-author of the fantastic book, Blood and Oil,

Mohammed bin Salman's ruthless quest for global power.

Bradley Hope has been on the podcast before discussing his excellent work on the one

MDB story that led to his book Billion Dollar Whale.

He works for the Wall Street Journal in London covering finance and financial malfeasance,

and he spent six years based in the Middle East.

Bradley, thank you for joining me.

Thank you very much.

The book is filled with detailed, fascinating, horrifying, in some cases, stories.

So let's focus on just a few of those, and I urge listeners to read the book for an incredible treatment of the region and the

rise of MBS.

But I think the story that compliance professionals and others interested in financial crime

are going to be most curious about, most baffled by is what happened at the Ritz Carlton in 2017.

So perhaps we can start with that.

I think it's actually probably the single most fascinating thing that happened in Saudi Arabia

under Mohammed bin Salman.

Essentially, a secret operation was underway for maybe the better part of a year,

a kind of investigation into corruption in Saudi Arabia that led to this phenomenal scene of all

the richest and most powerful businessmen and princes being hauled into the Ritz Carlton,

which was sort of taken over at the last minute

by the royal court. And they were held there in a kind of prison-like circumstances. They were

...