Rights group urges Premier League to “re-examine” Newcastle takeover

The English Premier League “needs to re-examine the assurances” it was given about potential Saudi state control of Newcastle United, human rights group Amnesty International said.

“It was always stretching credulity to breaking point to imagine that the Saudi state wasn’t directing the buyout of Newcastle with the ultimate aim of using the club as a component in its wider sportswashing efforts,” Amnesty International’s UK economic affairs director Peter Frankental said.

“There’s an unmistakable irony in the sovereign wealth fund declaration emerging in a dispute about another arm of Saudi Arabia’s growing sports empire, but the simple fact is that Saudi sportswashing is affecting numerous sports and governing bodies need to respond to it far more effectively.

“The Premier League will surely need to re-examine the assurances made about the non-involvement of the Saudi authorities in the Newcastle deal, not least as there’s still a Qatari bid for Manchester United currently on the table.”

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The Premier League has declined to comment.

A San Francisco court has approved the PGA Tour’s request to include Al-Rumayyan and the PIF as defendants in its lawsuit against LIV and ordered them to produce documents in the case.

The PIF, however, is challenging the order, arguing the fund and its governor Al-Rumayyan “are not ordinary third parties subject to basic discovery relevance standards”.

“The order is an extraordinary infringement on the sovereignty of a foreign state that is far from justified here,” a court document reads.

“They are a sovereign instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a sitting minister of the Saudi government, and they cannot be compelled to provide testimony and documents in a US proceeding unless their conduct – not LIV’s or anyone else’s – is truly the ‘gravamen’ of the case.”