The battle for the Kuwaiti Emiracy continues. It has now been revealed in documents filed with the High Court in London that the principal contender for the Emiracy from the Al-Salim side of the family, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, is the kickback king of international sporting organisations; and also a major international drug dealer who deals drugs out of premises in downtown Kuwait City.
The Court documents, that are dated 18 and 20 January 2022, appear here.
Read together, they make the following accusations:
International sporting organisations elect their officials and members of their governing boards on a one member state - one vote basis.
Ahmed is the most powerful financier in international sports because he scoops up the votes of less well off member states to elect international sporting body board members. He does this by making facilitation payments (i.e. corrupt payments) into those states. So for example he might offer a US university scholarship on behalf of an international sporting organisation to the relative of a sports minister who might be the decision-making person in the member state who decides which international sports governing board candidates their countries will vote for.
Ahmed instructs the decision-maker how to cast their votes in each of the international sporting body management board election proceedings, in exchange for the facilitation payment (be it a university sports scholarship or something else).
As a result a plurality or majority of the members of management boards of international sporting organisations owe their positions to Ahmed's patronage. In consequence of this, the governing boards vote as Ahmed directs.
The International sporting bodies create a lot of revenue out of the international sporting events that they organise. There is income for everything from tickets sales through broadcasting rights to image and branding intellectual property rights.
Ahmed directs the members of the international sporting bodies that owe him patronage to vote in favour of schemes that transfer proportions of the sporting body revenues to slush funds run by him and that have no or little genuine activities.
One of the most notorious of these organisations is the Olympic Council of Asia, an Ahmed-run slush fund.
Ahmed uses the money in these slush funds to continue the scheme: that is to say, to make further facilitation payments to one member one vote member states of sporting organisations in exchange for the positions on sporting organisation management bodies that Ahmed wants.
In addition, intelligence indicates that Ahmed is a notorious cocaine dealer and possibly dealer of other drugs. The drugs are transferred in private aeroplanes he uses, not least from South America to Europe and to Kuwait. Ahmed operates a holding address in central Kuwait City for the storage of recreational narcotics unlawfully moved across borders by him and with an intention for onward supply.
The High Court in London will now have to investigate these allegations, using the extensive evidence-collecting machinery at its disposal. This branch of the High Court, called the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, does not operate using the adversarial approach of litigants presenting evidence. Instead, because the materials available to this branch of the Court include western intelligence files, the Court operates in private and uses its own officers to undertake private measures of investigation without informing the parties what measures it is taking. Hence it is one of the few English courts that uses an inquisitorial system of approach.
In the meantime, we watch while events before the Court play out.