Premier League clampdown on rogue owners branded ‘toothless’ with Saudis at Newcastle and Qatar’s Man Utd bid unaffected

SO there we have it. 

The Premier League’s response to both the Government and the Newcastle ownership row.

PANewcastle’s Saudi takeover was allowed to go through in 2021[/caption]

Club chiefs voted in favour of new rules that will see a Government banned list used to determine who can own clubs.

Further measures that would have seen the automatic expulsion of Roman Abramovich when he was sanctioned by the Government last year were approved by the 20 club chiefs.

But the Saudi ownership of Newcastle or Qatari Sheikh Jassim’s potential takeover of Manchester United, are not affected.

The clampdown was slammed by angry human rights groups who branded it “toothless”.

And the new rules, which also include an extension of the criminal ownership “disqualifying” offences to include “violence, corruption, fraud, tax evasion and hate crimes” were slammed by human rights organisations.

Prem clubs will want the new rules to be seen as proof that the game can regulate itself.

No room, formally, for fraudsters, conmen, thugs or racists. Blimey. I didn’t know they WERE allowed.

Nor, it seems, for the leaders of The Taliban, Al Qaeda and Isis, or Vladimir Putin, all still on the UK sanctions list.

The fact that the Prem’s rules did NOT previously, explicitly, rule out such a nest of vipers is hardly a reason to bathe in glory.

And while we now know, officially, that there is no way back for Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov, or their many hangers on and fellow Oligarchs, relying on the Government’s list of the unwanted does not really represent leadership.

The bloke who put billions into Chelsea is banned. 

Fair enough. The obscenities we have witnessed in Ukraine make that a reasonable position and Abramovich is close to Putin.

Presumably we can add North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, any of the Iranian mullahs or the next Pol Pot.

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GettyRoman Abramovich was kicked out of Chelsea last year[/caption]

But it’s OK for the Government which chops up dissidents into little pieces in its consulate in Ankara to buy Newcastle, because the UK wants to keep Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and his regime onside.

That should not be a surprise, either.

Jeed Basyouni, of Middle East group Reprieve, stormed: “Where was this resolve to keep the world’s worst human rights abusers out of the Premier League when Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund took over Newcastle United?

“Since that takeover in October 2021, the Saudi regime has executed more than 160 people, including scores of people whose only crime was to demand fundamental freedoms.

“If that isn’t counted as a disqualifying human rights abuse, then this new rule has no teeth and is just for show.”

Basyouni pointed to the ongoing court case in the USA between the PGA Tour and Saudi-owned LIV Golf.

Saudi’s Public Investment Fund and Toon chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan are arguing their status as an “instrument” and Minister of the Gulf state government mean they should not be forced to give evidence.

He added: “According to court documents, the chairman of the club is ‘a sitting minister of the Saudi government’. It is hard to see how he can continue as chairman under the new rules.”

Prem chiefs were put under pressure by the Government to green light the £300m Saudi deal in the first place.

It explains, perhaps, why chief executive Richard Masters was so evasive when he sat before MPs on Tuesday.

And why the top flight clubs are STILL awaiting a response to their letters to the League over the court claims in the USA which suggest the Public Investment Fund considers itself a branch of the Saudi government after all. 

Indeed, as long as the Saudis don’t now start dismembering any British journalists, that will probably be fine for everybody. Let’s not worry about other alleged human rights abuses.

Good news, too, for Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani in his quest to land Manchester United, presuming he finally comes up with a bid to satisfy the demands of the Glazers. 

That door is wide open – unless the Government suddenly decides it does not want a piece of Qatar’s oil and liquid gas supplies. Nope. Me neither.

And while there are other elements of the new test that are unquestionably for the better, overdue but necessary, it still feels like the Prem and its clubs have been forced into doing the right thing, rather than acting voluntarily.

The looming Independent Football Regulator, with its powers to impose rules and regulations that the Prem had not drafted, has clearly been a galvanising element – much as League chiefs will argue this was always going to be their direction of travel.

By making “violence, corruption, fraud, tax evasion and hate crimes” into “disqualifying events”, promising to stage annual evaluations of owners and publishing the criteria for purchasers as well as an annual list of the banned and damned, we will have some more clarity.

You do wonder, though, if the new rules may be adopted in haste – and repented of at leisure.

Any potential club chief who makes a casual racist remark, especially on social media, and is reported to the police, would arguably fail that “hate crime” barrier.

As would those under HMRC investigation. Remember those raids at West Ham and Newcastle a few years ago that ended up going absolutely nowhere?

Not much wriggle room now. The new rules state that the League now has the “power” to prevent anyone under investigation for those alleged offences to be banned from buying a club. 

Ownership, surely, would be a logical next step.

Something is better than nothing, for sure. There are rules, now, which were not there before.

But does anybody, truly, believe that the biggest issues have actually been addressed? Or is it still just about the money?

Sheikh Jassim’s Man United bid has been unaffected