Some wealthy Saudi individuals have been liquidating assets within Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf countries this week, apparently in an effort to move money out of the region and escape the crackdown, private bankers and fund managers said.
In Riyadh, rich individual investors have been selling equities heavily, although buying by state-linked funds has helped to support the market. In Dubai, shares in real estate developers have sunk as investors worry about the impact on the property market of a pull-out by Saudis.
The UAE commercial bankers said they had not been asked to freeze the Saudi accounts at their institutions, but they believed the central bank's request for information might be a prelude to such action.
The risk of the accounts being frozen "jeopardises Dubai's pitch as a private banking centre", said a Gulf-based banker, adding: "Banks in the UAE are full of Saudi money."
One senior banker at an international bank with business in Saudi Arabia said his institution had already frozen some accounts, both inside the kingdom and outside it, in response to Saudi government requests.
The bank is conducting its own investigations into accounts linked to people who have been detained, the banker said without elaborating.
Another banker in the region said his institution was receiving more enquiries from Saudi clients about cross-border financial transactions, but it was handling the enquiries with extreme caution as there could be further action by regulators.
The risk of fund outflows from the region has helped to push the currencies of Gulf Arab countries down slightly against the U.S. dollar in the forwards market this week.
The Saudi riyal dropped as low as 285 points in the one-year forwards market on Thursday - implying riyal depreciation of about 0.8 percent against the dollar in the next 12 months - from around 115 points before the crackdown.
However, it remains much stronger than it was last year, when it hit levels around 1,000 points because of worries about Saudi Arabia's ability to cope with an era of low oil prices.
