Jailed Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Saudi Arabia’s richest man, is running out of time to make a deal

>> Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has been detained for more than two months now by the government controlled by the new Saudi crown prince.

>> But now he's been reportedly moved from the Ritz Carlton hotel to a real prison and the government is also seizing some of his peers' property.

>> This all makes it look like Alwaleed's time to make a deal is running out, especially almost all of his supposed powerful friends stay silent.

Saudi Arabia's richest man is running out of time.

It's been more than two months since Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was first arrested and detained in what the Saudi government still calls an "anti-corruption" sweep. Yet the first sign of things getting more serious came early this week when Alwaleed was moved out of his restricted quarters at the Riyadh Ritz Carlton Hotel and moved to Al Ha'ir prison, according to the London-based Arabic news site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

Al Ha'ir is not exactly the Bastille, but the decision to get Alwaleed to a more secluded and secure location is ominous.

For more than two months, the prince had been held at the Riyadh Ritz along with what had originally been 200 of his fellow princes and top officials. That number has dwindled to just a few prisoners. Most of the former detainees have bought their freedom with payments and other forms of capitulation to the new Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But bin Talal is holding out, reportedly balking at the $6 billion bin Salman is demanding from him and/or control of some of his investment companies.

Prince bin Salman came to power last summer when King Salman made the extremely unusual move to change the order of succession and make bin Salman crown prince.

Since then he has been beefing up Saudi Arabia's military defenses against Iran, strengthening ties to the U.S. and even Israel in the process. In the fall, he further moved to purge the country of anti-Semitic and anti-American Islamic clerics. In November, bin Salman's economic reforms morphed into this arrest of Alwaleed and those 200 other princes and officials who were at least potential rivals in the overall power grab.

It's not that many of the crown prince's goals aren't prudent or even admirable. But the matter of human rights is being pushed aside. So is due process.

Another example of that happened this week with the Saudi government's outright seizure of the Binladin Group construction giant. A Reuters report says the government has taken managerial control and may also erase up to $30 billion in debt it owes the company. This is happening as leading members of the Bin Laden family, yes the extended family of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, were detained as well.

One of the most stunning aspects of bin Talal's detention is how quiet his long list of influential friends have been about it. This week brought at least some mention of his plight with a statement from two former French presidents who expressed concern over Alwaleed's status. But let's face it: a few words from a couple of French ex-presidents is peanuts.

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