Raphael Stevens

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund on Thursday withdrew its bid to become the latest foreign owner in England’s Premier League, pulling out of an agreement to buy Newcastle United after a tumultuous takeover process and significant pressure on the league to block the sale.Without criticizing the Premier League directly, the group led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund attributed the collapse of the deal in part to “an unforeseen prolonged process.”The Premier League, which had been vetting the proposed sale since April, made no comment on the withdrawal.The Saudi-led consortium, which included the British businesswoman Amanda Staveley and a British-based property company in addition to the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, was set to pay about $400 million for the team and its stadium, which has been owned by the sportswear magnate Mike Ashley since 2007.While the Premier League’s glamour and global reach have long made it a magnet for the world’s super rich — its team owners currently include American billionaires, a Russian oligarch, a Chinese holding company and the brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia’s bid for a team led to a level of discord rarely seen.Human rights groups and even the widow of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi wrote to the Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, to urge him to block the sale because of the involvement of the Public Investment Fund, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund led by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.A more important challenge to the takeover, at least for top Premier League officials, had come from beIN Media Group, the Qatar-owned television network. The network, one of the Premier League’s biggest broadcaster partners, has for three years has accused Saudi Arabia of being behind industrial-scale piracy of its programming.Only weeks before it began considering the Saudi takeover bid, the Premier League had written to the United States government to urge it to keep the kingdom on a watch list of countries that breach intellectual property rules.Once the Saudi bid became public, senior beIN officials lobbied the league and even the British government not to allow a Saudi state vehicle to join the ranks of club owners, and the Premier League spent months deliberating the so-called “fit and proper test” that is applied to all new owners.The Premier League was not known to have ever previously blocked a sale, and with the Saudi group’s withdrawal, it did not have to do so in this case.“Unfortunately, the prolonged process under the current circumstances coupled with global uncertainty has rendered the potential investment no longer commercially viable,” the investment group said in a joint statement. It said its agreement with Newcastle’s owners to buy the team had expired and appeared to blame uncertain economic conditions as the reason to walk away. Ashley had collected more than $25 million as a nonrefundable deposit.Premier League matches have a reach that surpasses any other similar global sports competitions, with its teams counting millions of passionate fans on continents thousands of miles away from the stadiums where games take place. That reach has attracted perhaps the most diverse ownership group in sports: Over the last two decades, British businessmen who once dominated the league’s ownership ranks have been edged out by billionaires from the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa — a membership that currently boasts a Russian-Israeli oligarch (Chelsea’s Roman Abramovich), one of Africa’s richest men (Aston Villa’s Nassef Sawiris) and the heirs to a Thai duty-free shopping empire (Leicester’s Srivaddhanaprabha family).The Saudi-led investors had proposed spending as much as $320 million over five years to turn Newcastle into a competitive force in the league and to invest in infrastructure around its stadium.The Saudi fund would not have been the league’s first Gulf-state owner: Manchester City, who won the league in two of the last three seasons, is controlled by the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates.While the league spent weeks in an uncomfortable spotlight created by the Saudi bid, Newcastle fans had largely rejoiced at the prospect of the unpopular Ashley’s being replaced by deep-pocketed owners.Since the first details of the proposed takeover emerged earlier this year, many Newcastle promoted it on social media, with some even changing their profile pictures to incorporate images of the Saudi flag or Salman, the kingdom’s crown prince.Most seemed to hope that the Saudis’ wealth would allow the team, whose raucous home support endures despite a middling on-field record, to compete for titles again. Newcastle narrowly missed missing winning the Premier League title twice in the mid-1990s but has not won a major domestic trophy since the 1955 F.A. Cup. The last of the club’s four English titles came in 1927. More

A federal prosecutor in Switzerland said on Thursday that he had opened a criminal investigation into Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, after concluding that there were “indications of criminal conduct” in meetings between Infantino and an official overseeing an investigation into soccer corruption.The investigation follows the resignation last week of Switzerland’s attorney general, Michael Lauber, who stepped down after a federal court upheld allegations that he had lied about meeting with Infantino. Lauber had been overseeing an investigation of the 2015 corruption scandal that led to criminal indictments against some of the top leaders at FIFA, soccer’s Switzerland-based world governing body. The scandal led to the ouster of most of FIFA’s senior leadership, and paved the way for Infantino’s victory in a special presidential election a year later.The federal prosecutor, Stefan Keller, announced the new investigation after reviewing two complaints made against Infantino, Lauber and Rinaldo Arnold, a regional prosecutor and a childhood friend of Infantino’s who had helped arrange meetings between the FIFA president and the attorney general. Arnold is also under investigation, Keller’s office said. Prosecutors called for Lauber’s immunity to be lifted so he could be investigated, too.In a statement, Keller said the allegations in two new complaints against Infantino, Lauber and Arnold center on the abuse of public office, breach of official secrecy, assisting offenders and incitement to break the law.The announcement is the latest legal complication for Infantino and Lauber, the attorney general, since details of their meetings emerged more than a year ago. They first came to light after a leak of emails by the Football Leaks platform, and became subject to more scrutiny when both men failed to remember what had been discussed at a meeting at a hotel in 2017, the third the pair had held in 15 months.“On the basis of general life experience, such a case of collective amnesia is an aberration,” was the conclusion in the federal court ruling that largely upheld an earlier censure of Lauber.Infantino has pushed back against the allegations, which have been the focus of intense news media interest in his native Switzerland and in Germany. In a statement on Thursday, Infantino pledged to continue to assist the Swiss investigations into FIFA.“People remember well where FIFA was as an institution back in 2015, and how substantial judicial intervention was actually required to help restore the credibility of the organization,” Infantino said. “As president of FIFA, it has been my aim from Day One, and it remains my aim, to assist the authorities with investigating past wrongdoings at FIFA.”But FIFA’s statement also pointedly rejected any implication of wrongdoing. “To meet with the Attorney General of Switzerland is perfectly legitimate and it’s perfectly legal,” Infantino said last week. “It’s no violation of anything.”When he resigned, Lauber insisted he had been truthful at all times, but he said his position had become untenable. “The fact that I am not believed as the attorney general is detrimental to the federal prosecution office,” he said.Keller, the federal prosecutor, was appointed in July after the receipt of anonymous criminal complaints that Infantino described as “quite absurd.”The speed of the proceedings against Infantino is in stark contrast with the plodding pace of previous Swiss soccer investigations, including the one started after a 2014 complaint by FIFA about suspected money laundering in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding campaigns.Since then, a number of other cases have been opened, but none have concluded with a conviction. The only criminal trial, against a group of former German soccer officials, collapsed because it had surpassed a statute of limitations.Lauber held a news conference after the details of the first two meetings with Infantino were revealed by Football Leaks. He claimed they were justified because of the longstanding investigation into the soccer body, though he recused himself from the FIFA case anyway. A third meeting came to light only after further revelations by the news media. That disclosure prompted an inquiry into Lauber’s conduct by a supervisory body. In March, it punished him by cutting his salary by 8 percent. Lauber then hired the same lawyer as the former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who is facing a separate criminal investigation, to mount an appeal.That panel restored some of the salary reduction, but it also issued scathing comments about his conduct in its final ruling.Lauber, the panel said, had “intentionally made a false statement” to the supervisory body “and knowingly concealed the third meeting with FIFA president Infantino.”The investigation is a new blow for FIFA, which has tried to turn the corner on the corruption scandal by instituting governance reforms under Infantino.Infantino, a former official at European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, has often claimed the days of cronyism and corruption are now behind the organization. But accusations of wrongdoing against senior officials have continued. A day after Infantino had told the FIFA Congress in Paris last year that the days of scandal were over, one of his vice presidents, the head of African soccer, was arrested and questioned by French financial prosecutors.A separate FIFA ethics probe into the official, Ahmad Ahmad, has yet to come to a conclusion even though the case has been with its investigators for more than a year. More

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