Eleven Saudi princes, four sitting ministers and dozens of former ministers have been detained by Saudi Arabia’s new anticorruption body, local media reports say.
Those detained were not named and it is not clear what they are suspected of.
However, local broadcaster Al-Arabiya said fresh investigations had been launched into the 2009 Jeddah floods and the outbreak of the MERS virus which emerged in Saudi Arabia in 2012.
The detentions came hours after the new anti-corruption committee was formed.
The anti-corruption committee is headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and has the power to issue arrest warrants and travel bans, the state-owned Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
Separately, the heads of the Saudi National Guard and the navy were replaced in a series of high-profile sackings.
According to SPA, King Salman had dismissed National Guard minister Prince Miteb bin Abdullah and navy commander Admiral Abdullah bin Sultan bin Mohammed Al-Sultan.
No official explanation was given for their removal.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently said the return of “moderate Islam” was key to his plans to modernize Saudi Arabia.
Addressing an economic conference in Riyadh, the crown prince vowed to “eradicate the remnants of extremism very soon”.
In 2016, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled a wide-ranging plan to bring social and economic change to Saudi Arabia.
Three activists of China’s anti-corruption group – New Citizens’ Movement – have been given lengthy jail terms for urging officials to disclose wealth.
Wei Zhongping and Liu Ping, associated with the New Citizens’ Movement, were given six-and-a-half years in jail. A third activist, Li Sihua, received a shorter sentence.
Rights group Amnesty International said the charges were “preposterous”.
China’s leaders are running a crackdown on corruption, but refuse to tolerate grassroots groups with similar aims.
The three activists were detained after taking photographs with banners urging officials to disclose their assets.
They were put on trial in a high-security court in Xinyu, Jiangxi province, late last year.
The detainment of anti-corruption activists has been a recurrent human rights issue in China
At the time, defense lawyers complained of serious procedural problems and said they were not confident of the outcome.
The three were convicted of the broad charge of “creating a disturbance”.
Liu Ping and Wei Zhongping were convicted of other charges, which Amnesty said included “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place” and “using an evil cult to undermine law enforcement”.
“The charges against these activists were preposterous from the very beginning,” said Amnesty’s William Nee.
Amnesty International described them as “prisoners of conscience” and called for their immediate release.
Chinese President Xi Jinping launched an anti-corruption drive when he took over in 2012.
But he has also overseen the broadest crackdown on grassroots activism that China has seen in recent years.
Several activists in the New Citizens’ Movement, which calls for more democracy and government transparency, have been detained.
In July last year, prominent lawyer Xu Zhiyong, one of the founders of the movement, was detained on suspicion of having “gathered crowds to disrupt public order”.
Xu Zhiyong was eventually jailed for four years in January.
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