Newcastle’s Saudi takeover: The UK government’s emails revealed. According to an investigation by The Athletic, the British government believed that the potential collapse of the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United posed an “immediate risk” to the country’s relations with the Gulf region.
A “senior interlocutor to imprint the interests” of the government onto the Premier League was even sought after, according to the then-prime minister Boris Johnson’s principal strategic advisor.
Newcastle’s Saudi takeover: The UK government’s emails revealed
The British Foreign Office appears to have been working hard to help Saudi Arabia, a nation accused of a long list of human rights violations, improve its reputation, according to 59 pages of emails between government officials that The Athletic was able to get. A British foreign ministry official brought up a BBC interview given by the bereaved fiancee of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi in April 2020, during which she begged the Premier League to prevent the takeover of Newcastle. According to the records, the Department of International Trade (DIT) planned to offer public relations services, maybe to aid in the takeover procedure.
Another revelation is that the British government established a strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia two years before the takeover bid first heated up in 2020. This was confirmed in a meeting between Theresa May, the country’s prime minister at the time, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS), at No. 10 Downing Street. According to documents made public by the Foreign Office, the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), the eventual owners of Newcastle, had a stated goal of “targeting direct investments totaling to $30 billion (£24 billion at today’s conversion rates) over a 10-year period into the UK.”
This is significant because it has been previously reported that MBS, the chairman of the PIF, warned Johnson over the phone that there might be negative economic repercussions for Britain if the Premier League resisted the takeover. This indicates the enormous sums of money that could be at stake for the UK economy.
The emails provide a three-month snapshot of the significance of this deal to the UK’s economy and detail the frequent communications between government ministers and civil servants working at the Foreign Office, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), other branches of the government, as well as the office of the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
