Newcastle's takeover by a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund was rubber-stamped in October 2021 after"legally binding assurances" that the Saudi government would have no control of the north-east club.
"The Premier League will surely need to re-examine the assurances made about the non-involvement of the Saudi authorities in the Newcastle deal, not least as there's still a Qatari bid for Manchester United currently on the table," said Peter Frankental, Amnesty's UK economic affairs director. The brief filed in the PGA Tour case against LIV Golf described the Public Investment Fund as"a sovereign instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
"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," Amnesty's Frankental was quoted as saying by the BBC.