The continuing legal battles between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf may have some huge unforeseen consequences on the other side of the Atlantic with Premier League side Newcastle United’s Saudi ownership now called into question.
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The takeover of Newcastle involving Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) was only approved by the Premier League after "legal assurances" were given that the Saudi government would not be involved.
However, a court case involving the PGA Tour and LIV Golf could have possibly thrown new light on the situation after lawyers for the PIF and governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan challenged a ruling for them to make documents available for discovery on the grounds that it infringed “the sovereignty of a foreign state.”
Having Newcastle chairman Al-Rumayyan described as "a sitting minister of the government" with "sovereign immunity" in a court case could alter the Premier League’s stance and call the entire takeover into question.
Al-Rumayyan and the PIF "are not ordinary third parties subject to basic discovery relevance standards" read a court document.
"The order is an extraordinary infringement on the sovereignty of a foreign state that is far from justified here," the court documents continued.
"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."
The revelations led to Amnesty International calling for the Premier League to re-examine the assurances Amanda Staveley and the ownership group made to them that the Saudi Arabian government would not be involved in running Newcastle United Football Club.
Under Premier League rules, nation states and governments cannot have a direct role in running a football club, which was a major sticking point to the deal going through in the first place.
Now the LIV Golf court case may have blown a huge hole in the arguments from the Saudi PIF, with the Premier League even able to remove the ownership if those legally binding assurances around government involvement are proven to be false.
"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," Peter Frankental, Amnesty International's UK economic affairs director, was quoted as saying by the BBC.
"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.”
While the golfing world is suffering from the fractious split in the sport and the battles between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, it come be that even the Premier League football world is rocked due to the fallout from the ongoing court case.
