The Premier League intends to review its regulations which govern who can own a football club once chief executive Richard Masters has met Amnesty International to discuss a human rights-compliant test process.
Human rights campaigners Amnesty sought a meeting with the Premier League in early 2020 when they learnt of an attempt by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) to purchase a controlling stake of Newcastle United. Amnesty wanted human rights violations to be included in the League’s Owners’ and Directors’ Test as a reason to prevent potential ownership.
Masters declined a meeting and replied by letter in April last year offering assurances that any potential owners would be vetted rigorously. “I can assure you that these processes go beyond those required by UK company law and they are applied with equal rigour to every single prospective purchase of a Premier League club,” Masters wrote.
Seventeen months later he cleared Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to purchase Newcastle for £305million.
The Saudi government is accused of a series of human rights violations – including persecuting homosexuals, imprisoning outspoken critics of the government and the murder of dissidents – and war crimes.
The current Owners’ and Directors’ Test prevents individuals from buying clubs if they have “criminal convictions for a wide range of offences, a ban by a sporting or professional body, or breaches of certain key football regulations, such as match-fixing”, the Premier League states. It does not, however, contain any rules regarding human rights violations.
On confirming the takeover, the Premier League insisted it had received “legally binding assurances that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will not control Newcastle United Football Club”, despite the fact Saudi Arabia clearly owns its own wealth fund and PIF’s website lists the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the fund’s chairman.
The completion of the takeover was met with fierce opposition from campaigners and fans of other clubs. Three weeks after signing off the deal, the Premier League agreed to meet Amnesty to discuss potential changes to the test.
“We have to go into the meeting optimistically and hope they’re willing to listen to our concerns, then see how the meeting goes,” Felix Jakens, Amnesty’s head of priority campaigns and individuals at risk, told i.
“Human rights should be considered as part of the decision about who should take ownership of a football club.”
The meeting will take place later in November and will be attended by Amnesty chief executive Sacha Deshmukh and David Chivers, a QC who drafted the human rights-compliant Owners’ and Directors’ Test first offered to the Premier League in 2020.
“The current rules concerning who owns and runs English football clubs are woefully inadequate, with no bar on ownership for those complicit in acts of torture, slavery, human trafficking or even war crimes,” Deshmukh said.
“The Saudi buyout of Newcastle United always looked like an attempt to sportswash Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record with the glamour and prestige of the Premier League and top-flight football.”
The Premier League is also expecting MP Tracey Crouch’s Fan Led Review of Football Governance to make further recommendations for the Owners’ and Directors’ Test, which will be noted during the review.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3om7sql
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