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New takeover rumours

Another article in the FT this morning about the Qataris buying Spurs - subscription only though so am not going to copy/paste here
 
I like levy and enic. And wouldn't want a take over full stop, but if its to happen much rather the quataris then a Liverpool or man utd style take over, which could potentially ruin us because we simply don't have the resources of those clubs. And such a take over is likely to see less investment in the team than enic have made (simply because of the amount of money needed to buy off enic).

As for the ethical questions around Qatar, a lot has been written on here, some ignorant (funding isis, which is bull****) and some with basis in fact (treatment of foriegn workers, attitudes to homosexuality)

but although far from perfect, they are one of the most (if not the most) progressive Arab states, and are making what seems a genuine effort to modernise, and reach out to the west. I don't think that them owning us would be a bad thing or an immoral one, if we become a small part of them modernising their attitudes and sorting out the mess that is the middle east then I'm actually for this.... OK last bit maybe a bit of pie in the sky.

Meanwhile we would be on a level playing field with Emirates Marketing Project Chelsea man u and ****. Which would be a good place to be.
 
Re: ****ter Rumour

Apologies if already posted - this article is dated 17 Dec

[h=2]Qatari government looking to buy Premier league club, possible £1b bid for Tottenham[/h]
The Qatari government is looking to purchase an English Premier League club, andTottenham Hotspur could be the recipient of a billion-pound takeover bid.
Qatari Sports Minister Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali has given quotes to the Associated press reporter Rob Harris indicating that the middle eastern country would like to expand into England's league, and Tottenham Hotspur might be the most tempting target (emphasis mine):
Q: In the UK do people ask you do invest in Premier League clubs?
al-Ali: I have a lot of interviews (sic) and people doing presentations for me. I'm very open to listen because some are good opportunities. And we in Qatar we look for good opportunities. I meet a lot of them and they do presentations from buying clubs to new clubs to all kinds of sports, and introducing new sports in Qatar. And a lot of opportunities. We are open we listen. Some of them it's not even time for it. And some of the opportunities are really good.
Q: Does Qatar want to own a Premier League club?
al-Ali: Yes, of course. Personally speaking I like the English Premier League personally speaking. Since I was young I have jerseys. I'm not going to tell you which clubs. I said it once and the guy was upset with me because he was an Arsenal ... I like all jerseys of Tottenham and I had 2 of them.
Q: Do you want to be a Premier League club owner?
al-Ali Of course. Definitely. 100 percent. It's very challenging. I don't know if at that time I would have the energy really to be in the spotlight, especially the English league you are under pressure always.
Q: Why do you want to own a Premier League team?
Here in Qatar we are very very good in taking something and really transforming it into something very very good. We take it to another step. Even if it's good we take it to another step.
And you can see what Paris Saint-Germain for 20 years did not win the championship. With respecting the culture, we became better now understanding the concerns of the people. In any investment really. In real estate, we have now a good experience in England and we understand the concerns and their hopes. We understand that very well. We are learning.
I don't think we are going to stop, we are just going to continue looking for good opportunities. Of course England, the emir was there and of course it's one of our best hubs for Qataris.
​
The rumored £1 billion takeover bid is reported in the Sun, which is behind a paywall and anyway isn't the most reliable of sources. Take all of this with a grain of salt for now, but there's smoke rising in the air, and all indications are that Qatar is serious about trying to bid for a Premier League club.
The Qatari government already owns Ligue 1 club Paris St. Germain through Qatar Sports Investments, which they have converted into a Champions League contender. This may provide a barrier to purchase if they have Champions League ambitions for their new club – UEFA regulations seem to prohibit one ownership group owning more than one club in any UEFA competition due to conflict of interest.

Spurs have been the center of two rumored takeover bids: one by investment group Cain Hoy and another from an American consortium backed by the Carlyle Group.

With current owner Joe Lewis claiming that it would take a billion pounds for him to sell the club, it would likely take a group with nearly unlimited wealth like the Qatari government to make it happen.

With Spurs planning a new stadium and showing a clear ambition for future growth, it's not at all unlikely that they could be viewed as an attractive target for takeover. It's premature to say that this is an actual thing that is happening, but we now know that Qatar wants to get into the Premier League, and the quotes from al-Ali strongly hint that they're at least looking at the lilywhite side of North London.



'UEFA regulations seem to prohibit one ownership group owning more than one club in any UEFA competition due to conflict of interest.'

​
 
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Re: ****ter Rumour

Here's the article from the FT. Most interesting bit is that Nasser Ghanim Al-Khelaifi, chairman of Qatar Sports Investments, visited Hotspur Way but this was officially declared as more in relation to research for PSG's planned new Training Ground than any takeover bid.

Qatar makes Tottenham Hotspur its goal

December 19, 2014 6:38 pm
Roger Blitz — Leisure Industries Correspondent

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cb07f95c-86ba-11e4-8a51-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3MRSlcHCD

Qatar’s UK trophy cabinet boasts Harrods, a stake in Barclays Bank and Chelsea Barracks, but has one omission: no Premier League football club.

Could that be about to change? Qatar, owners of French club Paris St Germain, shirt sponsors of Barcelona and hosts of the 2022 World Cup, appears to be interested in the Premier League — and one club catching its eye is Tottenham Hotspur in north London.

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cb07f95c-86ba-11e4-8a51-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3MRSqV8LT

The Qataris’ interest in Spurs has been stimulated by London mayor Boris Johnson. Keen on attracting foreign investment to the capital, and in particular cash for the regeneration of Tottenham, the mayor along with the UK government has been courting Qatar.

That suits Qatar, which is feeling the heat of British media attention on the contentious decision to award it the 2022 World Cup and the treatment of migrant workers employed on stadium projects.

“They are looking at all sorts of ways of currying favour with the British government,” said one person with knowledge of Qatar’s interest in Spurs.

On a UK visit in October, the emir of Qatar held talks with prime minister David Cameron about investing in infrastructure projects, such as the HS2 high-speed rail line.

Mr Johnson is keen to secure some of this investment for London, especially deprived areas. High on that list is Tottenham, where social unrest sparked riots across London and other English cities in 2011.

Spurs is one of the most prominent businesses in Tottenham, and its plan for a new 56,000-seat stadium is seen as a stimulus for regeneration. The stadium project — which will replace the 36,000-seater White Hart Lane — has already spawned a new Sainsbury’s superstore and a technical college nearby.

Income from a bigger stadium would also help the club compete with the big four of Emirates Marketing Project, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea.

But progress on the stadium project has stalled, and a number of people who know the mayor’s views say the delay is making him wonder whether it would be better for the area’s regeneration if the club was in different hands — such as the Qataris.

Spurs said: “The current owners have not been looking to sell the club.”

But Spurs’ owner, currency trader Joe Lewis, faces a crucial decision in the next few months: whether he is prepared to underwrite the stadium cost, which could be up to £400m, and nurse the project through to its completion in 2018.

Rothschilds is seeking financing for the stadium on Spurs’ behalf, and that process may flush out bidders for the club. One US investment group went public in September about weighing up a cash offer for Spurs but later pulled out.

There have been no talks with Qatar, said Spurs, although the Gulf state’s most senior sports executive did pay a visit to the club around the time of the emir’s UK trip.

Nasser Ghanim Al-Khelaifi, chairman of Qatar Sports Investments, the entity that owns PSG, met Spurs officials at the club’s training facility. According to some people who know about the visit, it was requested by QSI because PSG wants to build a similar training ground.

QSI told the FT it was not interested in investing in Spurs or any other European club. “We are 100 per cent focused on Paris St Germain.”

That does not rule out interest from other Qatari entities, however. In an Associated Press interview published this week, Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali, Qatar’s sports minister, said the Gulf state “definitely” wanted to be a Premier League owner.

There are hurdles to overcome. Owning more than one European club is banned under Uefa rules governing its competitions. Uefa would need to be convinced there was no connection between the ultimate owners of PSG and a Qatari entity buying another European club.

Another hurdle is the mayor’s frosty relations with Spurs. This stems from when Mr Johnson’s Greater London Authority persuaded the club to bid to become the anchor tenant of the Olympic stadium, only for them to lose out to rivals West Ham United.

Spurs feels the GLA should be helping to raise funds to advance its stadium plans, but in the mayor’s view, any significant public subsidy towards the redevelopment is wishful thinking.

Then there are local sensibilities to consider. Haringey Council, the local authority covering Tottenham, has plans for 10,000 new homes and knows private investment will be needed.

But council leader Claire Kober said: “Any involvement from external investors would have to be aligned across a range of stakeholders and interests to ensure that we get the best for Tottenham.”

Ultimately, the size of the cheque from a cash-rich buyer may make such hurdles look rather small.
Click to expand...
 
I think it fair to say that article excludes itself from the cut & paste prohibition.

The stuff about the Mayor makes little sense. All the help with respect to the Tottenham redevelopment came after the OS bid. Boris has his political interests and won't let minor disagreements derail his plans. Who owns Spurs makes little difference to the broader schem as long as the stadium is built. The only proviso here is if the owner also wants to be a major stakeholder in the broader regeneration, like in east Manchester. I think such an interest is plausible, but doesn't need ownership of the club.

The dual ownership also seems a major question. Even if they could establish ownership distance, they would surely want to confrm details first, although I suppose they could be relying on Platini''s family interests in QSI to easy arrangements. I'm not sure if it has changed, but the rule used to be a company couldn't have controlling interests in two clubs in UEFA competition. So a minority stake in Spurs, sponsorship of the stadium, and a role in the Tottenham regeneration could be a pluasible scenario.
 
****ing disgusting. Trying to buy stuff to curry favour in Britain.
Sort your ****hole country out.
Get rid of the slaves you have enough money to pay workers ffs.
 
DTA said:
I like levy and enic. And wouldn't want a take over full stop, but if its to happen much rather the quataris then a Liverpool or man utd style take over, which could potentially ruin us because we simply don't have the resources of those clubs. And such a take over is likely to see less investment in the team than enic have made (simply because of the amount of money needed to buy off enic).

As for the ethical questions around Qatar, a lot has been written on here, some ignorant (funding isis, which is bull****) and some with basis in fact (treatment of foriegn workers, attitudes to homosexuality)

but although far from perfect, they are one of the most (if not the most) progressive Arab states, and are making what seems a genuine effort to modernise, and reach out to the west. I don't think that them owning us would be a bad thing or an immoral one, if we become a small part of them modernising their attitudes and sorting out the mess that is the middle east then I'm actually for this.... OK last bit maybe a bit of pie in the sky.

Meanwhile we would be on a level playing field with Emirates Marketing Project Chelsea man u and ****. Which would be a good place to be.
Click to expand...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/20/us-iraq-security-germany-qatar-idUSKBN0GK1I720140820

German Development Minister Gerd Mueller accused Qatar on Wednesday of financing Islamic State militants who have seized wide areas of northern Iraq and have posted a video of a captive American journalist being beheaded.

"This kind of conflict, this kind of a crisis always has a history ... The ISIS troops, the weapons - these are lost sons, with some of them from Iraq," Mueller told German public broadcaster ZDF.

"You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops. The keyword there is Qatar - and how do we deal with these people and states politically?" said Mueller, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the center-right Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

Mueller did not elaborate and presented no evidence of a Qatari link to Islamic State. A German government spokesman said he was checking whether Mueller's remarks reflected the official view of Berlin.

Officials at the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, a wealthy Gulf Arab state, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on his accusation.

Qatar has denied that it supports Islamist insurgents in Syria and Iraq. Diplomats and opposition sources say that while Qatar supports relatively moderate rebels also backed by Saudi Arabia and the West, it also has backed more hardline factions seeking to set up a strict Islamic state.

In March, David Cohen, the U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, cited reports of Qatari backing for Islamist fighters in Syria and described this as a “permissive jurisdiction” for donors funding militants.

Qatar has also strongly backed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, outlawed since the Egyptian military overthrew an elected Islamist president in 2013, and has given refuge to many foreign Islamists including from Hamas and the Taliban.




http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/is...hy-gulf-angel-investors-officials-say-n208006

A small but steady flow of money to ISIS from rich individuals in the Gulf continues, say current and former U.S. officials, with Qataris the biggest suppliers. These rich individuals have long served as "angel investors," as one expert put it, for the most violent militants in the region, providing the “seed money” that helped launch ISIS and other jihadi groups.

No one in the U.S. government is putting a number on the current rate of donations, but former U.S. Navy Admiral and NATO Supreme Commander James Stavridis says the cash flow from private donors is significant now and was even more significant in the early fund-raising done by ISIS and al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the al-Nusrah Front.

"These rich Arabs are like what 'angel investors' are to tech start-ups, except they are interested in starting up groups who want to stir up hatred," said Stavridis, now the dean of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University. "Groups like al-Nusrah and ISIS are better investments for them. The individuals act as high rollers early, providing seed money. Once the groups are on their feet, they are perfectly capable of raising funds through other means, like kidnapping, oil smuggling, selling women into slavery, etc."

Stavridis and other current U.S. officials suggest that the biggest share of the individual donations supporting ISIS and the most radical groups comes from Qatar rather than Saudi Arabia, and that the Qatari government has done less to stop the flow than its neighbors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. One U.S. official said the Saudis are "more in line with U.S. foreign policy" than the Qataris.

Groups like ISIS and al-Nusrah employ fundraisers who meet with wealthy Sunni Arabs. Most of the Arab states have laws prohibiting such fundraising, but U.S. officials say the Qataris do not strictly enforce their laws.

A U.S. intelligence official said the amount provided by wealthy individuals is small relative to the group’s other sources, but admitted that the flow continues. “Although ISIS probably still receives donations from patrons in some of the Gulf countries," said the official, “any outside funding represents a small fraction of ISIS’s total annual income.”

The U.S. believes ISIS is taking in about $1 million a day from all sources. The largest source of cash now, say U.S. officials, is oil smuggling along the Turkish border, with ISIS leaders willing to sell oil from conquered Syrian and Iraqi fields for as little as $25 a barrel, a quarter of the going world price. Other previously lucrative sources, like kidnapping for ransom, are not what they once were. As one U.S. official put it, "there are only so many rich Syrian businessmen." Similarly, there are fewer banks to loot.

Adm. Stavridis, author of the forthcoming book "Accidental Admiral," suggests that the U.S. must cut off as much funding as it can, calling cash flow the "fourth front" in the war against ISIS, along with helping the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi military and carrying out a bombing campaign.

As long ago as last March, before ISIS's military advances, a senior Treasury Department official spoke publicly about "permissive jurisdictions" that were allowing fundraising on behalf of ISIS and other groups.

"A number of fundraisers operating in more permissive jurisdictions -- particularly in Kuwait and Qatar -- are soliciting donations to fund extremist insurgents, not to meet legitimate humanitarian needs,” said Daniel Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. "The recipients of these funds are often terrorist groups, including al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, al-Nusrah Front, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS]."

David Phillips, a former senior advisor to the State Department on Iraq and now director of the Program on Peace-building and Human Rights at Columbia University, said the bottom line, financially and politically, is that "wealthy Arabs are playing a dirty double game. “

“Their governments claim to oppose ISIS,” he said, “while individuals continue funding terrorist activities."

The financial help from "rich patrons," as U.S. intelligence calls them, was also noted this week by Iranian officials, who have been excluded from participating in anti-ISIS discussions. High-ranking officials complained publicly Wednesday about the early role of Arab states in building opposition to the Assad regime to Syria, and blamed them for the consequences.

On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, in comments to the Council of Foreign Relations, said it was not realistic to expect those who have helped fund ISIS and other groups to now oppose them.

Zarif called the recently convened Paris conference on fighting ISIS a "coalition of repenters" who are only now seeing that they have created a monster. The Gulf states were among the countries attending the summit.

"Most participants in that -- in that meeting in one form or another provided support to ISIS in the course of its creation and upbringing and expansion, actually at the end of the day, creating a Frankenstein that came to haunt its creators," Zarif told the CFR. "So this group has been in existence for a long time. It has been supported, it has been provided for in terms of arms, money, finances by a good number of U.S. allies in the region."

In an interview earlier the same day with Ann Curry of NBC News, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was just as emphatic, asking a string of rhetorical questions.

"Who financed them? Who provided them with money? It's really clear -- where do the weapons come from?" asked Rouhani. "The terrorists who have come from all the countries, from which channel [did they enter], where were they trained, in which country were they trained? I don't think it is somehow difficult to identify this information.”

But U.S. officials suggest that as the group has expanded -- and its range of enemies has broadened – so have its costs, which could make the group vulnerable.

"Is [the ISIS financial model] sustainable?" asked Stavridis. "The bigger they get, is that their downfall?"

The Qatari Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Qatar has previously strongly denied supporting ISIS "in any way," including funding.





http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/w...extremists-alienates-allies-near-and-far.html

Qatar’s Support of Islamists Alienates Allies Near and Far

CAIRO — Standing at the front of a conference hall in Doha, the visiting sheikh told his audience of wealthy Qataris that to help the battered residents of Syria, they should not bother with donations to humanitarian programs or the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.

“Give your money to the ones who will spend it on jihad, not aid,” implored the sheikh, Hajaj al-Ajmi, recently identified by the United States government as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

Qatar is a tiny, petroleum-rich Persian Gulf monarchy where the United States has its largest military base in the Middle East. But for years it has tacitly consented to open fund-raising by Sheikh Ajmi and others like him. After his pitch, which he recorded in 2012 and which still circulates on the Internet, a sportscaster from the government-owned network, Al Jazeera, lauded him. “Sheikh Ajmi knows best” about helping Syrians, the sportscaster, Mohamed Sadoun El-Kawary, declared from the same stage.

Sheikh Ajmi’s career as fund-raiser is one example of how Qatar has for many years helped support a spectrum of Islamist groups around the region by providing safe haven, diplomatic mediation, financial aid and, in certain instances, weapons.

Sheikh Ajmi and at least a half-dozen others identified by the United States as private fund-raisers for Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise operate freely in Doha, often speaking at state-owned mosques and even occasionally appearing on Al Jazeera. The state itself has provided at least some form of assistance — whether sanctuary, media, money or weapons — to the Taliban of Afghanistan, Hamas of Gaza, rebels from Syria, militias in Libya and allies of the Muslim Brotherhood across the region.

Now, however, Qatar is finding itself under withering attack by an unlikely alignment of interests, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, which have all sought to portray it as a godfather to terrorists everywhere. Some in Washington have accused it of directly supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — an extremist group so bloodthirsty that Al Qaeda has condemned it — a charge that Western officials, independent analysts and Arab diplomats critical of Qatar all call implausible and unsubstantiated.

“That is just disinformation,” said Michael Stephens, a researcher based in Doha for the Royal United Services Institute, a British research center. “I am not going to excuse what Qatar has done: It has been grossly irresponsible when it comes to the Syrian conflict, like many other countries,” he said. “But to say that Qatar is behind ISIS is just rhetoric; it is politics getting in the way of things, and it blinds people to real solutions.”

Propelling the barrage of accusations against Qatar is a regional contest for power in which competing Persian Gulf monarchies have backed opposing proxies in contested places like Gaza, Libya and especially Egypt. In Egypt, Qatar and its Al Jazeera network backed the former government led by politicians of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other gulf monarchies long despised the Brotherhood because they saw it as a well-organized force that could threaten their power at home, and they backed the military takeover that removed the Islamist president.

Qatar is hardly the only gulf monarchy to allow open fund-raising by sheikhs that the United States government has linked to Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, the Nusra Front: Sheikh Ajmi and most of the others are based in Kuwait and readily tap donors in Saudi Arabia, sometimes even making their pitches on Saudi- and Kuwaiti-owned television networks. United States Treasury officials have singled out both Qatar and Kuwait as “permissive jurisdictions” for terrorist fund-raising.

In many cases, several analysts said, Qatar has sought to balance a wager on the future of political Islam as a force in the region with a simultaneous desire not to alienate the West. It has turned a blind eye to private fund-raising for Qaeda-linked groups to buy weapons in Syria, for example, but it has not provided direct government funding or weapons. At times, Mr. Stephens and other analysts said, Western pressure has moved Qatar to at least partly suppress some of the overt fund-raising.

Qatar openly provides a base for leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas — deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel — as well as money to help prop up its government in Gaza. But American and Israeli officials say Qatar has stopped short of providing the group with weapons, as Iran does.

Qatar has allowed members of the Taliban to open an office and make their homes in Doha, but as part of deals approved by Washington.

In Libya, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are now backing rival sides in Libya’s escalating domestic unrest, each with unsavory ties: The U.A.E. is backing former fighters for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and members of his ruling elite, while Qatar is backing a coalition that includes militant Islamist groups.

During the 2011 uprising in Libya, Qatar supported an Islamist militia in Benghazi known as Rafallah al-Sehati that had relatively Western-friendly leaders but extremists in its ranks. The extremists later broke away to form Ansar al-Shariah, the militant group that played a role in the death of the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens.

Now Qatar is still backing militias at least loosely allied with the group in their fight against an anti-Islamist faction backed by the United Arab Emirates.

But Qatar has also tried to draw lines, according to Western diplomats and Islamists who have worked with Doha. Since the military ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood’s government in Egypt, for example, Islamists in exile say that Qatar has given them sanctuary but has pointedly refused to provide money to the Brotherhood for fear of further alienating its gulf neighbors who backed the takeover.

“They try to calibrate,” said one Brotherhood leader, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the Qataris.

Many analysts say it is Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood that has drawn accusations from other gulf states that have charged that Qatar is funding terrorism in Syria and elsewhere.

“The big falling-out is over Egypt, not Syria,” said Paul Salem, a scholar at the Middle East Institute. Now, he said, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the other gulf states “are putting the squeeze on Qatar.”

Since the military takeover in Cairo, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have all withdrawn their ambassadors from Doha. And Israel, which once praised Qatar as the only gulf state to open bilateral relations, appears to be capitalizing on the split to pressure Qatar over its support for Hamas. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, recently called Doha “Club Med for terrorists” in an opinion article in The New York Times.

The United Arab Emirates have retained an American consulting firm, Camstoll Group, staffed by several former United States Treasury Department officials. Its public disclosure forms, filed as a registered foreign agent, showed a pattern of conversations with journalists who subsequently wrote articles critical of Qatar’s role in terrorist fund-raising.

“All the gulf intelligence agencies are competing in Syria and everyone is trying to get the lion’s share of the Syrian revolution,” Sheikh Shafi al-Ajmi, also recently identified by the United States as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, said in an interview on the Saudi-owned Rotana television network last summer.

He openly acknowledged his role buying weapons from the Western-backed military councils, who sometimes received arms from Qatar. “When the military councils sell the weapons they receive, guess who buys them? It’s me,” he said.

He defended the Nusra Front despite its ties to Al Qaeda. “We should not stop supplying them with weapons, because they are still fighting Assad,” he said. And he shared a joke with the host about Kuwait’s well-known role as the hub for Syrian rebel fund-raising. (Both Shafi al-Ajmi and Hajaj al-Ajmi are Kuwaitis; lawyers for both have said they raise money only for legitimate Syrian causes.)

Qatar says it opposes all “extremist groups,” including ISIS. “We are repelled by their views, their violent methods and their ambitions,” Khalid al-Attiyah, the Qatari foreign minister, said in a recent statement about the allegations.

In early 2013, when the West stepped up pressure on Persian Gulf states to crack down on Qaeda-linked fund-raisers, some complained that Qatar was turning against them. Other sheikhs “were welcomed as heroes at a conference in Doha and given lots of gifts, all to cut the support for the Nusra Front and to support the military councils, the pagan coalition,” Hamid Hamad Hamid Al-Ali, another Kuwaiti-born preacher designated last month as a terrorist fund-raiser, protested in an Internet posting in March 2013.

But social media posts and television appearances show that at least a half-dozen United States-designated terrorist fund-raisers, some designated years earlier, continued to frequent Doha.

In 2010, an arm of the Qatari government made a donation to help build a $1.2 million mosque in Yemen for a sheikh, Abdel Wahab al-Humayqani, designated as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. (Qatari Embassy officials and Yemeni government officials both attended the opening.)

In 2011, Harith al-Dari, an Iraqi sheikh and tribal leader designated as a terrorist fund-raiser in 2008, appeared on Al Jazeera praying at the opening of a state-owned mosque in Doha just steps from the crown prince of Qatar.

“Arab countries won’t let us in to discuss things with them and complain to them — except one or two,” Sheikh Dari said in a television interview in January. He spoke on Al Jazeera from Qatar, which was evidently among the “one or two.”



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11156327/Al-Qaeda-terror-financier-worked-for-Qatari-government.html
http://www.france24.com/en/20130121-qatar-mali-france-ansar-dine-mnla-al-qaeda-sunni-islam-doha/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...onsorship-deal-claims-trusts-links-Hamas.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/29/rebels-fearful-of-islamist-takeover/#ixzz2NIOC1awF
 
It isn't in question that Qatar has run an independent foreign policy that has entailed support for both somewhat moderate, mainly political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and more unsavoury groups like ISIS, and that this backing has taken the form of both outright arms shipments and more subtle financial transfers/handling. It is also not in doubt that their treatment of workers and poor economic migrants is worse than the way even their own GCC neighbors treat their own working underclass, and Qatar's neighbors (the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia) are by absolutely no means humane when it comes to dealing with their base labour force.

These things can't really be disputed effectively, imo. The question is, can we overlook that?
 
milo said:
Thanks but I would say that it was supposition rather than substantiation. We all know that we broke transfer records at the time, so did several clubs, what you haven't shown is that we grossly spent beyond our means.
Click to expand...

Well, it was the best I could do using the limited information available to me. The clearest link I could find was that we outspent even Man United, even though they had consistently higher gates than us, often by 10-15 percent margins too. We also outspent the clubs with similar gates to us.

For what it's worth, my assertion is based on what I believed to be generally accepted folklore: I was told by a couple of posters on Vital Spurs a long time ago that we'd always spent big, especially in the 60s: a bit of research turned up those gate figures put up, and the logical link I made then satisfied me. I'm open to information that indicates otherwise, of course.


glasgowspur said:
After the debacle of sir Jimmy getting away with it for years any hint of child abuse at a high level has to seen to be thoroughly investigated, and rightly so. But it highlights what I think a lot of the objections people would have with morally dubious owners- guilt by association.
Now almost anyone in politics from the 80s or entertainment from the 70s is sitting wondering if they will be next for investigation.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using Fapatalk
Click to expand...

Very true.
 
Modric THFC said:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/20/us-iraq-security-germany-qatar-idUSKBN0GK1I720140820

German Development Minister Gerd Mueller accused Qatar on Wednesday of financing Islamic State militants who have seized wide areas of northern Iraq and have posted a video of a captive American journalist being beheaded.

"This kind of conflict, this kind of a crisis always has a history ... The ISIS troops, the weapons - these are lost sons, with some of them from Iraq," Mueller told German public broadcaster ZDF.

"You have to ask who is arming, who is financing ISIS troops. The keyword there is Qatar - and how do we deal with these people and states politically?" said Mueller, a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the center-right Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

Mueller did not elaborate and presented no evidence of a Qatari link to Islamic State. A German government spokesman said he was checking whether Mueller's remarks reflected the official view of Berlin.

Officials at the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, a wealthy Gulf Arab state, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on his accusation.

Qatar has denied that it supports Islamist insurgents in Syria and Iraq. Diplomats and opposition sources say that while Qatar supports relatively moderate rebels also backed by Saudi Arabia and the West, it also has backed more hardline factions seeking to set up a strict Islamic state.

In March, David Cohen, the U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, cited reports of Qatari backing for Islamist fighters in Syria and described this as a “permissive jurisdiction” for donors funding militants.

Qatar has also strongly backed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, outlawed since the Egyptian military overthrew an elected Islamist president in 2013, and has given refuge to many foreign Islamists including from Hamas and the Taliban.




http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/is...hy-gulf-angel-investors-officials-say-n208006

A small but steady flow of money to ISIS from rich individuals in the Gulf continues, say current and former U.S. officials, with Qataris the biggest suppliers. These rich individuals have long served as "angel investors," as one expert put it, for the most violent militants in the region, providing the “seed money” that helped launch ISIS and other jihadi groups.

No one in the U.S. government is putting a number on the current rate of donations, but former U.S. Navy Admiral and NATO Supreme Commander James Stavridis says the cash flow from private donors is significant now and was even more significant in the early fund-raising done by ISIS and al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the al-Nusrah Front.

"These rich Arabs are like what 'angel investors' are to tech start-ups, except they are interested in starting up groups who want to stir up hatred," said Stavridis, now the dean of the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University. "Groups like al-Nusrah and ISIS are better investments for them. The individuals act as high rollers early, providing seed money. Once the groups are on their feet, they are perfectly capable of raising funds through other means, like kidnapping, oil smuggling, selling women into slavery, etc."

Stavridis and other current U.S. officials suggest that the biggest share of the individual donations supporting ISIS and the most radical groups comes from Qatar rather than Saudi Arabia, and that the Qatari government has done less to stop the flow than its neighbors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. One U.S. official said the Saudis are "more in line with U.S. foreign policy" than the Qataris.

Groups like ISIS and al-Nusrah employ fundraisers who meet with wealthy Sunni Arabs. Most of the Arab states have laws prohibiting such fundraising, but U.S. officials say the Qataris do not strictly enforce their laws.

A U.S. intelligence official said the amount provided by wealthy individuals is small relative to the group’s other sources, but admitted that the flow continues. “Although ISIS probably still receives donations from patrons in some of the Gulf countries," said the official, “any outside funding represents a small fraction of ISIS’s total annual income.”

The U.S. believes ISIS is taking in about $1 million a day from all sources. The largest source of cash now, say U.S. officials, is oil smuggling along the Turkish border, with ISIS leaders willing to sell oil from conquered Syrian and Iraqi fields for as little as $25 a barrel, a quarter of the going world price. Other previously lucrative sources, like kidnapping for ransom, are not what they once were. As one U.S. official put it, "there are only so many rich Syrian businessmen." Similarly, there are fewer banks to loot.

Adm. Stavridis, author of the forthcoming book "Accidental Admiral," suggests that the U.S. must cut off as much funding as it can, calling cash flow the "fourth front" in the war against ISIS, along with helping the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi military and carrying out a bombing campaign.

As long ago as last March, before ISIS's military advances, a senior Treasury Department official spoke publicly about "permissive jurisdictions" that were allowing fundraising on behalf of ISIS and other groups.

"A number of fundraisers operating in more permissive jurisdictions -- particularly in Kuwait and Qatar -- are soliciting donations to fund extremist insurgents, not to meet legitimate humanitarian needs,” said Daniel Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. "The recipients of these funds are often terrorist groups, including al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, al-Nusrah Front, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS]."

David Phillips, a former senior advisor to the State Department on Iraq and now director of the Program on Peace-building and Human Rights at Columbia University, said the bottom line, financially and politically, is that "wealthy Arabs are playing a dirty double game. “

“Their governments claim to oppose ISIS,” he said, “while individuals continue funding terrorist activities."

The financial help from "rich patrons," as U.S. intelligence calls them, was also noted this week by Iranian officials, who have been excluded from participating in anti-ISIS discussions. High-ranking officials complained publicly Wednesday about the early role of Arab states in building opposition to the Assad regime to Syria, and blamed them for the consequences.

On Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, in comments to the Council of Foreign Relations, said it was not realistic to expect those who have helped fund ISIS and other groups to now oppose them.

Zarif called the recently convened Paris conference on fighting ISIS a "coalition of repenters" who are only now seeing that they have created a monster. The Gulf states were among the countries attending the summit.

"Most participants in that -- in that meeting in one form or another provided support to ISIS in the course of its creation and upbringing and expansion, actually at the end of the day, creating a Frankenstein that came to haunt its creators," Zarif told the CFR. "So this group has been in existence for a long time. It has been supported, it has been provided for in terms of arms, money, finances by a good number of U.S. allies in the region."

In an interview earlier the same day with Ann Curry of NBC News, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was just as emphatic, asking a string of rhetorical questions.

"Who financed them? Who provided them with money? It's really clear -- where do the weapons come from?" asked Rouhani. "The terrorists who have come from all the countries, from which channel [did they enter], where were they trained, in which country were they trained? I don't think it is somehow difficult to identify this information.”

But U.S. officials suggest that as the group has expanded -- and its range of enemies has broadened – so have its costs, which could make the group vulnerable.

"Is [the ISIS financial model] sustainable?" asked Stavridis. "The bigger they get, is that their downfall?"

The Qatari Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Qatar has previously strongly denied supporting ISIS "in any way," including funding.





http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/w...extremists-alienates-allies-near-and-far.html

Qatar’s Support of Islamists Alienates Allies Near and Far

CAIRO — Standing at the front of a conference hall in Doha, the visiting sheikh told his audience of wealthy Qataris that to help the battered residents of Syria, they should not bother with donations to humanitarian programs or the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.

“Give your money to the ones who will spend it on jihad, not aid,” implored the sheikh, Hajaj al-Ajmi, recently identified by the United States government as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

Qatar is a tiny, petroleum-rich Persian Gulf monarchy where the United States has its largest military base in the Middle East. But for years it has tacitly consented to open fund-raising by Sheikh Ajmi and others like him. After his pitch, which he recorded in 2012 and which still circulates on the Internet, a sportscaster from the government-owned network, Al Jazeera, lauded him. “Sheikh Ajmi knows best” about helping Syrians, the sportscaster, Mohamed Sadoun El-Kawary, declared from the same stage.

Sheikh Ajmi’s career as fund-raiser is one example of how Qatar has for many years helped support a spectrum of Islamist groups around the region by providing safe haven, diplomatic mediation, financial aid and, in certain instances, weapons.

Sheikh Ajmi and at least a half-dozen others identified by the United States as private fund-raisers for Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise operate freely in Doha, often speaking at state-owned mosques and even occasionally appearing on Al Jazeera. The state itself has provided at least some form of assistance — whether sanctuary, media, money or weapons — to the Taliban of Afghanistan, Hamas of Gaza, rebels from Syria, militias in Libya and allies of the Muslim Brotherhood across the region.

Now, however, Qatar is finding itself under withering attack by an unlikely alignment of interests, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel, which have all sought to portray it as a godfather to terrorists everywhere. Some in Washington have accused it of directly supporting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — an extremist group so bloodthirsty that Al Qaeda has condemned it — a charge that Western officials, independent analysts and Arab diplomats critical of Qatar all call implausible and unsubstantiated.

“That is just disinformation,” said Michael Stephens, a researcher based in Doha for the Royal United Services Institute, a British research center. “I am not going to excuse what Qatar has done: It has been grossly irresponsible when it comes to the Syrian conflict, like many other countries,” he said. “But to say that Qatar is behind ISIS is just rhetoric; it is politics getting in the way of things, and it blinds people to real solutions.”

Propelling the barrage of accusations against Qatar is a regional contest for power in which competing Persian Gulf monarchies have backed opposing proxies in contested places like Gaza, Libya and especially Egypt. In Egypt, Qatar and its Al Jazeera network backed the former government led by politicians of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other gulf monarchies long despised the Brotherhood because they saw it as a well-organized force that could threaten their power at home, and they backed the military takeover that removed the Islamist president.

Qatar is hardly the only gulf monarchy to allow open fund-raising by sheikhs that the United States government has linked to Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, the Nusra Front: Sheikh Ajmi and most of the others are based in Kuwait and readily tap donors in Saudi Arabia, sometimes even making their pitches on Saudi- and Kuwaiti-owned television networks. United States Treasury officials have singled out both Qatar and Kuwait as “permissive jurisdictions” for terrorist fund-raising.

In many cases, several analysts said, Qatar has sought to balance a wager on the future of political Islam as a force in the region with a simultaneous desire not to alienate the West. It has turned a blind eye to private fund-raising for Qaeda-linked groups to buy weapons in Syria, for example, but it has not provided direct government funding or weapons. At times, Mr. Stephens and other analysts said, Western pressure has moved Qatar to at least partly suppress some of the overt fund-raising.

Qatar openly provides a base for leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas — deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel — as well as money to help prop up its government in Gaza. But American and Israeli officials say Qatar has stopped short of providing the group with weapons, as Iran does.

Qatar has allowed members of the Taliban to open an office and make their homes in Doha, but as part of deals approved by Washington.

In Libya, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are now backing rival sides in Libya’s escalating domestic unrest, each with unsavory ties: The U.A.E. is backing former fighters for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and members of his ruling elite, while Qatar is backing a coalition that includes militant Islamist groups.

During the 2011 uprising in Libya, Qatar supported an Islamist militia in Benghazi known as Rafallah al-Sehati that had relatively Western-friendly leaders but extremists in its ranks. The extremists later broke away to form Ansar al-Shariah, the militant group that played a role in the death of the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens.

Now Qatar is still backing militias at least loosely allied with the group in their fight against an anti-Islamist faction backed by the United Arab Emirates.

But Qatar has also tried to draw lines, according to Western diplomats and Islamists who have worked with Doha. Since the military ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood’s government in Egypt, for example, Islamists in exile say that Qatar has given them sanctuary but has pointedly refused to provide money to the Brotherhood for fear of further alienating its gulf neighbors who backed the takeover.

“They try to calibrate,” said one Brotherhood leader, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the Qataris.

Many analysts say it is Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood that has drawn accusations from other gulf states that have charged that Qatar is funding terrorism in Syria and elsewhere.

“The big falling-out is over Egypt, not Syria,” said Paul Salem, a scholar at the Middle East Institute. Now, he said, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the other gulf states “are putting the squeeze on Qatar.”

Since the military takeover in Cairo, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have all withdrawn their ambassadors from Doha. And Israel, which once praised Qatar as the only gulf state to open bilateral relations, appears to be capitalizing on the split to pressure Qatar over its support for Hamas. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, recently called Doha “Club Med for terrorists” in an opinion article in The New York Times.

The United Arab Emirates have retained an American consulting firm, Camstoll Group, staffed by several former United States Treasury Department officials. Its public disclosure forms, filed as a registered foreign agent, showed a pattern of conversations with journalists who subsequently wrote articles critical of Qatar’s role in terrorist fund-raising.

“All the gulf intelligence agencies are competing in Syria and everyone is trying to get the lion’s share of the Syrian revolution,” Sheikh Shafi al-Ajmi, also recently identified by the United States as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, said in an interview on the Saudi-owned Rotana television network last summer.

He openly acknowledged his role buying weapons from the Western-backed military councils, who sometimes received arms from Qatar. “When the military councils sell the weapons they receive, guess who buys them? It’s me,” he said.

He defended the Nusra Front despite its ties to Al Qaeda. “We should not stop supplying them with weapons, because they are still fighting Assad,” he said. And he shared a joke with the host about Kuwait’s well-known role as the hub for Syrian rebel fund-raising. (Both Shafi al-Ajmi and Hajaj al-Ajmi are Kuwaitis; lawyers for both have said they raise money only for legitimate Syrian causes.)

Qatar says it opposes all “extremist groups,” including ISIS. “We are repelled by their views, their violent methods and their ambitions,” Khalid al-Attiyah, the Qatari foreign minister, said in a recent statement about the allegations.

In early 2013, when the West stepped up pressure on Persian Gulf states to crack down on Qaeda-linked fund-raisers, some complained that Qatar was turning against them. Other sheikhs “were welcomed as heroes at a conference in Doha and given lots of gifts, all to cut the support for the Nusra Front and to support the military councils, the pagan coalition,” Hamid Hamad Hamid Al-Ali, another Kuwaiti-born preacher designated last month as a terrorist fund-raiser, protested in an Internet posting in March 2013.

But social media posts and television appearances show that at least a half-dozen United States-designated terrorist fund-raisers, some designated years earlier, continued to frequent Doha.

In 2010, an arm of the Qatari government made a donation to help build a $1.2 million mosque in Yemen for a sheikh, Abdel Wahab al-Humayqani, designated as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. (Qatari Embassy officials and Yemeni government officials both attended the opening.)

In 2011, Harith al-Dari, an Iraqi sheikh and tribal leader designated as a terrorist fund-raiser in 2008, appeared on Al Jazeera praying at the opening of a state-owned mosque in Doha just steps from the crown prince of Qatar.

“Arab countries won’t let us in to discuss things with them and complain to them — except one or two,” Sheikh Dari said in a television interview in January. He spoke on Al Jazeera from Qatar, which was evidently among the “one or two.”



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11156327/Al-Qaeda-terror-financier-worked-for-Qatari-government.html
http://www.france24.com/en/20130121-qatar-mali-france-ansar-dine-mnla-al-qaeda-sunni-islam-doha/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...onsorship-deal-claims-trusts-links-Hamas.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/29/rebels-fearful-of-islamist-takeover/#ixzz2NIOC1awF
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The articled that's you quote are highly dubious, you could equally find and equal number or not more stating the wests role in the foundation of Isis. I have no connection with qatar. And have already stated that I would rather enic stay in control. But anybody who has even a small understanding of the problems in the middle east will know that Qatar's foreign policy is fundamentally opposser to isis. Do they have somewhat dubious links with other possibly somewhat questional groups like the Muslim brotherhood and al nusri ... Well yes. But Isis.. No, that makes no sense.... And if you want I can tell you exactly why. That doesn't mean that rich individuals from Qatar have not offered funding to isis... I don't know if they have, but I can see this as plausable, but Qatar foreign policy would be directly opposed to the support of isis, and if you know about the region you would know exactly why.
 
Lets be clear, most money of the type that allows billions of dollars into a PR/media/toy type play is very rarely clean.

Arab states also have massively questionable practices re basic human rights, that said, the practice of western governments over the recent past are extremely questionable as well.

I think one of the points made earlier is "ideally we could manage it on our own" that however is not really a reality and we likely will have little or no say into who/when we change ownership. Given the choice it would be in Spurs best interest that it is a City type takeover where money will be spent on club/area/community without too much circus, vs. a leveraged takeover where it could destroy the club's financial viability for years to come.

this is one of those moral areas that I struggle with .. because we would be cheating against cheaters there would be a sweetness to it .. can you imagine beating Cheat$i to a major title ... hahaha ..
 
Re: ****ter Rumour

Qatar have not funded ISIS. They helped arm FSA and some other relatively moderate rebel groups. They are as anti ISIS as anyone. Those articles are neo con nonsense.

They have plenty of issues without us needing to add spurious claims regarding them to the pot.
 
Raziel said:
Lets be clear, most money of the type that allows billions of dollars into a PR/media/toy type play is very rarely clean.

Arab states also have massively questionable practices re basic human rights, that said, the practice of western governments over the recent past are extremely questionable as well.

I think one of the points made earlier is "ideally we could manage it on our own" that however is not really a reality and we likely will have little or no say into who/when we change ownership. Given the choice it would be in Spurs best interest that it is a City type takeover where money will be spent on club/area/community without too much circus, vs. a leveraged takeover where it could destroy the club's financial viability for years to come.

this is one of those moral areas that I struggle with .. because we would be cheating against cheaters there would be a sweetness to it .. can you imagine beating Cheat$i to a major title ... hahaha ..
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Apart from the moral question, there is the risk of it going bad. If we could guarantee a new owner would be like the Shiekh and Abramovich the choice becomes purely moral, but we could end up with a Thaksin or a penniless Saudi billionaire (like Portsmouth). Qatar looks like the former, but there is the complicating factor of dual ownership and their wealth will depend on oil prices.
 
jts1882 said:
Apart from the moral question, there is the risk of it going bad. If we could guarantee a new owner would be like the Shiekh and Abramovich the choice becomes purely moral, but we could end up with a Thaksin or a penniless Saudi billionaire (like Portsmouth). Qatar looks like the former, but there is the complicating factor of dual ownership and their wealth will depend on oil prices.
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I think the dual ownership is easily circumvented. Another arm of the government buys and job done. Correct me if I am wrong please.
 
That should not be possible as they do supposedly look at cross-subsidies.

However, we have seen how they looked at the sponsorships at PSG and City, which is not very much at all. We also know that Platini's son has a well paid position with QSI in Paris because he is the most talented person in the world for that job.
 
DubaiSpur said:
Well, it was the best I could do using the limited information available to me. The clearest link I could find was that we outspent even Man United, even though they had consistently higher gates than us, often by 10-15 percent margins too. We also outspent the clubs with similar gates to us.

For what it's worth, my assertion is based on what I believed to be generally accepted folklore: I was told by a couple of posters on Vital Spurs a long time ago that we'd always spent big, especially in the 60s: a bit of research turned up those gate figures put up, and the logical link I made then satisfied me. I'm open to information that indicates otherwise, of course.
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Did we outspend Man U or just break the transfer record more frequently than them during this period? I have not been able to find any reliable information on the cost of each team.

The important thing for me, if you are trying to draw parallels between the modern oligarchs and Spurs spending in the early sixties, is that we would have to have grossly outspent our rivals and spent far higher than our income for there to be any similarities. I do not see that you have been able to demonstrate this.
 
In the 60s we definitely were renowned as the country's heaviest spending club. Our team for the 1967 FA Cup Final cost over £500k, a massive amount back then (and that even had two youth players in it in Kinnear and Saul). Furthermore, any money spent on player transfers back then was tax deductable (unlike ground improvements), so we were pretty much behooved to spend that money (which was generated organically through our on field success in that decade).

As far as the Qatar rumour goes, I'd rather win one Peace Cup on our own than win the league with that lot funding it.
 
If first point of order under our new Qatari overlords is that we sign back Gareth Bale, then that would make me very happy.
 
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