As Newcastle United supporters gathered at St. James’ Park on Thursday to celebrate their new ownership, a lot of eyebrows were being raised outside of the club’s fanbase.
The Premier League gave the green light to the club’s buyout for more than 350 million euros by Saudi Public Investment Fund. The deal could see the Magpies climb to the level of Manchester City, Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain in the next few years, but there are big problems with the move.
“Instead of allowing those implicated in human rights violations to enter football just because they have money, we urge the Premier League to change its policies around owners to align with human rights,” said Amnesty International in a statement on Thursday.
That is where Mohammed bin Salman becomes relevant. The 36-year-old’s fortune is 11 times that of Manchester City’s owners, making him football’s richest owner.
But questions have to be asked of his character. He held a ‘party without limits’ in the Maldives in 2015, transferring 150 women from Russia and Brazil, having had them subjected to medical tests to rule out the passing of sexually transmitted diseases. He hired performers such as Pitbull and Psy, and he tried to buy silence but ultimately failed.
A US intelligence report, according to the BBC, “implicates the crown prince of Saudi Arabia in the murder or journalist Jamal Khashoggi” in 2018. The prince approved a plan to capture and to kill Khashoggi, the BBC report.
Bin Salman, for his part, denies any involvement.
Khashoggi had gone to the Saudi Arabian consulate in search of documents to formalise his marriage and was never seen alive again. It was said that he died of an overdose, but an investigation indicated that he was dismembered alive at the consulate.
Khashoggi’s widow, Hatice Cengiz, condemned the sale of Newcastle when it first appeared likely in April of 2020, stating “it would ruin the good reputation of the Premier League”.
