5 Stocks To Watch Amid The Arrest Of Saudi Investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal

Billionaire Saudi royal family Alwaleed Bin Talal was among the handful of princes arrested in the country over the weekend. In total, 11 princes, four ministers and several former ministers were arrested in a large scale corruption crackdown.

However, the country is a monarchy and rule of law is certainly different than western countries. It's possible the arrests are part of a power grab strategy by the country's 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad in Salman, who could be appointed as king this year or early next year, Robert Jordan, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia told CNBC.

"It's a classic power grab move sometimes to arrest your rivals or potential rivals under the pretext of corruption," the former ambassador said. "We don't know which way this is going to go."

If the arrest of Saudi Arabia's equivalent of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett is very much a power grab, then it's "unsettling, shows disrespect for the rule of law and makes it harder to attract foreign investment," Jordan added.

Related Link: Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Compares Bitcoin To Enron: 'It Just Doesn't Make Any Sense'

Here is a list of five stocks investors may want to keep a close eye on following the arrest of Bin Talal.

• Twitter Inc TWTR: Bin Talal has been one of the largest shareholders in the social media company. Back in 2015, he owned a larger stake of the company than CEO Jack Dorsey.
• Twenty-First Century Fox Inc FOXA: Bin Talal ranked as 21st Century Fox's second-largest shareholder as of April 2016. He pledged at that time $36 million to finance Arab films.
• Citigroup Inc C: Bin Talal has been a shareholder in the American-based bank since 1991 and was considered a core holding in his "forever" portfolio. But he said in late 2016 that stocks he had previously vowed to never sell, including Citigroup and Twitter, could be sold in the future.
• Apple Inc. AAPL Back in 1997 Bin Talal's stake in Apple stood at more than 5 percent of the entire company, a position he has held on to ever since.
• JD.Com Inc(ADR) JD: Bin Talal led a group of investors in raising $700 million to buy a stake in the China-based ecommerce platform back in 2013.

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