For the fifth consecutive year, Forbes' World's Billionaires list did not feature any Saudi national. Forbes released the list of World's Billionaires for 2022 earlier this year, which saw the number of global billionaires decline to 2,668 from 2,755 in 2021.
According to Forbes, the total net worth of the world's billionaires stood at $12.7 trillion in 2022 against $13.1 trillion in 2021.
In a separate statement, Forbes said Nassef Sawiris was the world's richest Arab with a net worth of $7.7 billion. Egypt and Lebanon had six billionaires each, making them the countries with the highest number of billionaires in the Arab region.
Since 2018, Forbes has not included Arabs in the global list. That year, the magazine decided to exclude all Saudi Arabian tycoons after the Saudi Arabian government detained dozens of top businessmen from the oil-rich kingdom in a corruption case in 2017.
Following the orders from the anti-corruption committee headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the government arrested prominent billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal along with 10 other princes, four ministers and tens of former ministers.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal the chairs publicly traded investment firm Kingdom Holding, which owns stake in Twitter, Citigroup and the Four Seasons. The prince was said to have control over satellite television networks across the Arab world.
In the 2017 Forbes list, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's net worth was pegged at $18.7 billion, CNN reported.
Apart from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, at least three other Saudi billionaires from Forbes' 2017 list were reportedly detained.
Detainees later had reportedly reached a settlement with the authorities, who seized over $100 billion in assets through such deals. However, the government refused to divulge details of which billionaires were netted in the sweep and how much they contributed.
Unable to assess the wealth of the oil kingdom's richest men, Forbes decided to remove Saudi billionaires from their annual list.
