What Happened in Riyadh (2)
(WST) Saudi Arabia, the Beginning of Change and Reform
(Omitted)
Rashid, newly crowned as Crown Prince, immediately declared a program of national reform.
It included a plan to break free of a resource-dependent economy by building new cities and fostering advanced industries.
As everyone knew, Saudi Arabia relied on oil for most of its fiscal revenue.
But with low oil prices dragging on the budget, the deficit was growing worse every year, and last year alone it had reached eighty-five billion dollars.
No matter how good a policy was, it still required money. With the treasury empty, economic reform was impossible.
So the Crown Prince pulled out a card no one had expected.
He would claw back the money held by wealthy royals and businessmen and return it to the state treasury.
Rashid summoned around a thousand royals and corporate leaders to the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, then had the doors locked behind them.
They found themselves confined to their rooms and subjected to questioning.
There was only one way out of that place.
They had to swear loyalty to the Crown Prince and surrender their fortunes to the state.
What had once been a hotel where tourists stayed had now become the most luxurious prison in the world.
Those who admitted to illicit enrichment called foreign banks and sent emails on the spot, transferring their money out of their own accounts.
Those who paid enough of what the authorities called their “patriotic contribution” were pardoned for their past sins and released. But the ones who could not comply were still locked in their lavish rooms, being interrogated even now.
The Saudi government added more names to its arrest list and banned some royals from leaving the country, beyond those already under questioning.
Some of those trapped in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton protested their detention anonymously, calling it unjust.
“We’re under twenty-four-hour surveillance, and we’re being interrogated after sleeping only a few hours at a time. Human rights abuses are happening here as a matter of routine. We’re at risk of having our property stolen from us. We urgently need the help of the international community.”
But Chairman Asher, who was overseeing the investigation, said something very different.
“Every investigation is being conducted in accordance with proper procedure and method. Calling it a human rights abuse is nothing more than a desperate excuse from people who don’t want to pay. Recovering criminal proceeds for the state treasury is entirely proper and common sense. Any other asset contribution is being made voluntarily. Every asset they surrender will go into the sovereign wealth fund and be used for national development. Most of them are more than willing to pay their patriotic contribution.”
With such a clear justification in the name of rooting out corruption, it was difficult for the international community to step in.
Above all, Saudi citizens who had grown weary of corruption and backroom dealing over the years were broadly welcoming the Crown Prince’s measures.
Saudi state media released an interview with Prince Khalid.
He was the son of the twenty-sixth king and had become famous for monopolizing government infrastructure contracts and selling them off to foreign companies for massive profits.
His estimated fortune was an astounding twenty billion dollars.
He could only walk out of the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton safely after handing over a staggering ninety percent of it—eighteen billion dollars.
In the interview, Prince Khalid said this:
“I’m so happy that I was able to contribute the wealth I accumulated to the state and its people. If it were up to me, I would have given everything away and left not a single coin behind, but the Crown Prince was generous enough to leave me quite a lot. May God bless him!”
Investors sharpened their attention as news kept pouring out of Saudi Arabia day after day.
It made sense. Saudi Arabia was the world’s largest oil producer, the leader of OPEC, and a major player in the global investment market.
But since the king had not died and no coup had taken place, and only the number two had changed, there was no real turmoil.
The impact on the global economy was negligible as well. Stock prices and oil prices kept moving along exactly as before.
If anything, expectations that Saudi Arabia would accelerate its economic development pushed related stocks higher.
After finishing my business in Japan, I was back in New York again.
The biggest story on Wall Street at the moment was, unsurprisingly, Saudi Arabia.
Dong-ho asked, still looking as if he couldn’t make sense of it.
“No, but how is it a reform if women are allowed to drive?”
“Because before this, women driving was illegal.”
That was the part that surprised people the most when they looked at these reform measures.
Even so, when people thought of Saudi Arabia, they imagined a country with money and wealth, so they probably hadn’t expected society to be this rigid or the gender discrimination to be this severe.
To outsiders, even the reforms being proposed now were little more than normalizing the abnormal. But by Saudi standards, they were absurdly radical.
It was like shouting for gender equality in the Joseon Dynasty.
So naturally, the backlash was fierce.
In fact, during the first regression, Islamic clerics had risen up and even plotted a coup, which had led to their arrest and execution.
“What’s the difference between sibling inheritance and father-son inheritance?”
“If sibling inheritance means relatives share power and all get rich together, father-son inheritance means only the family gets rich.”
In other words, he no longer had any reason to spare his relatives’ feelings.
“Ah, so that’s why he locked them all up.”
“Exactly.”
The speed at which money was extracted was far faster than expected. The reason was that they had been quietly investigating the assets of royals and corporate figures for a long time already.
Once they shoved the evidence of illicit enrichment in their faces and told them to cough it up, there was no choice but to hand over whatever was demanded.
According to one rumor, they had even set an internal collection target, and that target was a staggering three hundred billion dollars.
Considering Saudi Arabia’s annual GDP was eight hundred billion dollars, that was equivalent to fully one-third of the country’s output.
Even if you stripped every chaebol in South Korea bare, you still probably wouldn’t get that much.
With the momentum on his side, Crown Prince Rashid even created an organization called the Anti-Corruption Committee. From here on out, he intended to use the banner of anti-corruption to monitor and purge political enemies as well.
He could strengthen royal authority, make money, and win public support all at once.
It was the ultimate triple win.
David looked at me and asked, “Did you expect this kind of situation when you met Crown Prince Rashid?”
“I thought it was possible.”
In the original timeline, this was supposed to happen at the end of the year.
Had I accelerated it?
Everyone else was stunned at that.
“You met Crown Prince Rashid?”
“Is that really true?”
“Yes. When he was visiting Korea, for a short while.”
Dong-ho nodded beside me for no good reason.
“Right. You sold him a painting then. Since he was Middle Eastern, I thought he lived in Jungdong, Bucheon. Anyway, didn’t you two get fairly close then?”
“Well…”
We had talked about fairly deep things and I had sold him a painting. That was enough to count as having some kind of connection, wasn’t it?
“If you’re close, then what?”
“Well, maybe one day you’ll all get invited to the royal palace as state guests.”
“…”
Dream big, I guess.
“How’s the atmosphere over there?”
“I feel like I’m going to die from being this busy.”
“I’m at the palace right now, handling everything.”
“I’ll hand you to your brother for a second.”
“Huh?”
“Oh! You mean…”
“It’s been a while.”
— Rashid
That was Crown Prince Rashid’s voice.
Thankfully, it seemed he hadn’t forgotten me yet.
I offered my congratulations.
“Congratulations on becoming Crown Prince.”
“I have a great deal of work ahead of me.”
“If it’s Your Highness, I’m sure you’ll do well.”
“I received a great deal of help from you.”
“What did I even do?”
“Didn’t you tell me to arrest the royals and businessmen and recover the money they had illicitly accumulated? If I hadn’t listened to you that day, I wouldn’t have thought to do it.”
“...Yes?”
No, hold on. That was what you were already planning to do.
Why did you keep trying to pin it on me?
While Chairman Samara fled Japan and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince changed, then drove forward with his reform campaign, there were many changes in other companies as well.
First, Blackwood Hotel revamped its website and launched a lodging-sharing app.
Just as we had discussed before, it introduced ultra-luxury homes and European castles, and it varied which properties could be booked depending on the membership tier of the existing Blackwood Hotel program.
Reaction after the app’s release was explosive.
If you had the money, you could live in the house or castle you had always dreamed of for the rest of your life. As memberships flooded in, hotel occupancy also rose alongside it.
Thanks to that, the stock price was climbing too.
And Tom Scott, CEO of Legend Games, released the Island Mode update for Nightlight.
Players could decorate their own space on their private islands and invite friends over.
Once people could gather their characters together and hang out over voice chat without even touching the campaign, skin sales rose and the amount of time users spent in the game increased dramatically.
As Nightlight became a hit, traffic to Legend Store surged as well.
People were stunned by the store’s new appearance.
From a functional standpoint alone, it no longer lagged behind Stream in any meaningful way, and in areas like streaming and chat, the community features were even stronger.
Users were more than satisfied.
As user accounts kept growing, game companies began lining up one after another to release their titles as timed exclusives on Legend Store, and as a result Legend Store rose to become the undisputed number two in the PC ESD market.
Feeling the threat, Bellevue announced that it would slash Stream’s sales commission from thirty percent to twenty percent—an entire one-third reduction—and developers cheered at the lower fees.
Continue Capital paid the remaining twelve billion dollars and officially announced its acquisition of Legend Games.
I called Syd.
“You worked hard.”
“Not at all. It wasn’t really that difficult.”
Blackwood Hotel’s app and Legend Store’s overhaul had all been handled by Snow Crash.
“I’m heading back to Korea tomorrow.”
“When are you coming back to the U.S.?”
“Soon. Take care of yourself until then.”
“You take care too, hyung.”
Thinking about it, a great many things had happened in America.
Snow Crash had landed Blackwood Hotel, the FBI, and the NSA as clients; O'Connor Burger had launched its franchise business; and Continue Capital had completed its acquisition of Legend Games.
It felt as if the seeds I’d scattered over time were finally sprouting, one by one.
This was how the world moved forward, one step into the future at a time.
I shook hands with David.
“We’ll be going now.”
He squeezed my hand and said, “You’ve worked hard all this time. I’ll be waiting until you come back.”
And so, after finishing my schedule in the United States, I returned to Korea with Dong-ho and Kim Beom-seok, just as I had come.
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