TEHRAN — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “modernization agenda” has drawn international attention, but a Financial Times investigation into the 2017 Ritz-Carlton purge raises serious questions about how the kingdom treated some detainees during that period.

The investigation, published in FT Weekend Magazine on September 12, details how the anti-corruption campaign became, according to detainees and their families, a system of detention and financial pressure.

The harrowing case of Rami Naimi offers a rare window into that system. Naimi has spent nine years trapped, enduring repeated detentions, secret trials, and continuously coerced financial settlements, according to the report.

‘Gilded prison’

The nightmare began in November 2017. Naimi, the son of former Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, was intercepted at Dubai airport.

Emirati security forces transferred him to Abu Dhabi police headquarters. He was then rendered to Riyadh aboard a private jet.

Authorities locked him inside the Ritz-Carlton hotel, converting the world-famous luxury venue into what the FT describes as a “gilded prison.”

Naimi told his wife, Mira Lozi, that captors removed the doors from guest rooms. Guards moved blindfolded prisoners to a “dedicated torture area” inside the hotel gym. He was waterboarded, electrocuted, and beaten.

Interrogators targeted him to access his father’s immense fortune. They falsely claimed the older man was suffering torture in an adjacent room. They offered Naimi a “5 per cent” cut if he surrendered the family funds.

After 85 days of abuse, Naimi broke. He was forced to place his fingerprints on a document pledging to pay the kingdom’s rulers roughly $1.3 billion, a sum later reduced to $266 million, the report says.

The illusion of release and secret captivity

Authorities “freed” him in January 2018. This supposed freedom was entirely illusory.

Officials fitted him with an ankle tag, restricted his movements to his father’s house in Dhahran, and banned him from leaving the country. State handlers called constantly to demand money he did not possess, according to the report.

In September 2022, the state seized him again. For 18 months, Naimi vanished into a secret facility run by the “anti-corruption agency” Nazaha.

Guards subjected him to constant artificial light and the deliberate banging of metal pipes. He spoke to no one but his captors. Naimi later described the terrifying isolation to his wife, stating he was treated “like a caged animal”.

‘They’ve stripped us of everything’

By July 2024, authorities relocated him to the maximum-security al-Ha’ir prison. He was briefly released in March 2025, returning home severely underweight, hypervigilant, and dependent on high doses of antidepressants, his family says.

The kingdom then initiated closed criminal proceedings. Prosecutors cited a 2010 contract involving Saudi Aramco to levy conflict-of-interest charges, while also prosecuting him for failing to pay the coerced Ritz-Carlton settlement.

A judge convicted Naimi in November 2025, handing down a six-year prison sentence. The Saudi Supreme Court rejected his final appeal in May 2026, according to the investigation.

According to his family, the extortion never stopped. In early July 2026, Nazaha officials reportedly demanded a fresh $26 million payment to keep him out of prison.

The psychological toll on his family remains devastating.

“They took 10 years of his life, they took 10 years of my kids’ lives,” Lozi said. “They’ve stripped us of everything, money and life and years that are irreplaceable.”

Naimi now awaits another hearing regarding allegations of “following hostile social media accounts.”