Success at all costs? A deep dive into the ethical records of Spurs’ current and prospective owners

ENIC has confirmed that Spurs are “not for sale,” but the word on the streets of North London suggests otherwise. A sale may not be forthcoming now, but football moves fast, money talks, and Spurs are proving to be an attractive option for wealthy people looking to invest in a Premier League club.

Fans are concerned that some new owners may pose an ethical dilemma. Spurs fans are proud of the club’s history of anti-racism and inclusivity, but not all new owners may share these values. All money comes with strings attached, but there are degrees of evil, and everyone has their own red lines. This article will explore the ethical record of current, and rumoured prospective owners of our great club.

Saudi Arabia & PIF

For all the talk of Amanda Staveley’s appearances at the Lane, since the Saudi backed investment fund PIF already own 80% Newcastle, any attempt by the Saudis to gain a stake in another PL club might be scrutinised under the competition rules, particularly given UEFA have highlighted these rules as a problem area that they are prioritising. However, back in 2022, Saudi sports Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Faisal backed any new private sector move for a PL club. The Saudi Royal Family has around $1.3tn in the bank; so nothing is off the table: despite Fifa’s virtue signalling over LGBTQIA+ rights, racism and equality, Fifa seem to have bent over backwards to ensure the Saudi´s could host the 2034 world cup by accelerating the bidding process to ensure they were the only bidder.  

So how does Saudi Arabia shape up when it comes to having the right values to manage our great club? Spoiler alert, rather poorly. The country scored a dismal 4/100 on the Civicus monitor human rights rating.

Saudi Arabia has a track record of sportswashing, i.e. investing in sports to whitewash its human rights record and create the appearance of acceptability. By investing in other countries through sportswashing, it may hope to benefit by gaining enough votes for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council, for example, thereby expanding its global power and influence. According to the House of Lords, hosting sporting events amounts to “the practice of public diplomacy by states to both demonstrate existing soft power capability as well as pursue its further enhancement.”

The country is an authoritarian monarchy. There is no freedom of expression. In 2022, a blogger was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years imprisonment for founding an online forum for political debate. Despite inclusive statements from the Saudis around the World Cup, the fact is that any gay person, or ‘unchaperoned woman’ within or visiting the country is on offer for jail time. In 2020, a Yemeni blogger was sentenced to 10 months, fined and deported for supporting LGBTQIA+ rights online. In November 2022, a female Saudi fitness instructor was forcibly disappeared and sentenced to 11 years in prison for wearing ‘indecent clothing,’ or, in other words, a sports tracksuit. They’ve a record of brash and violent behavior abroad too; in 2018 a journalist critic of the royal family was dismembered and disposed of in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The country still carries out mass executions, killing 81 people in one day in March 2022. Death sentences have been doled out to residents that resisted forced evictions to make way for PIF construction projects. While women can now drive, they have no right to political participation; they can’t vote. There are no rights to assembly, no protesting, and no trade unions. 

Like Qatar, Saudi Arabia is mired in human rights scandals related to migrant construction workers, usually from South and Southeast Asia. These workers are often lured into the country on the premise of fair work, but then end up working under conditions of indentured slavery, with their passports withheld, pay frequently late or unpaid, living in squalid conditions, trapped and unable to leave until project completion. The country will now initiate construction projects on an unprecedented scale in preparation for the World Cup. With no known plans to implement effective safety or due diligence regulations, nor to improve worker rights, the World Cup will likely endanger the wellbeing of thousands of workers.

In addition, Saudi´s attempt to reinstate a favourable government by going to war with Yemen, and the resultant blockade of Yemen, has caused an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

If the Saudis take over Spurs I will stop supporting the club until they are gone. Success at all costs? We’re not perfect now, but surely we’re better than this.

Qatar

Rumours of a bid from the Qatari royal family began to gain traction in the summer of 2025. However, while the regime is considered repressive in the Civicus monitor, it achieved a score of 29/100, performing marginally better than Saudi Arabia. Like Saudi Arabia, Qatar is a constitutional monarchy with the Emir maintaining absolute power.

Qatar received a significant level of scrutiny following its hosting of the 2022 World Cup. That scrutiny shone a light in international media on the poor state of human rights. This also led to some small victories due to the resulting global pressure. The Qatari regime agreed to work with a domestic labor union and other stakeholders to implement programmes that would seek to investigate and reduce human rights complaints linked to migrant workers involved in World Cup associated projects. This follows significant labour reforms in 2020 that provided some degree of protection, if only on paper, for migrant workers. These developments were significant, given that during the lead-up to the 2022 World Cup, international migrants represented 78.7% of Qatar’s population, and 95% of the labour force.

Despite these developments, wage theft, movement restrictions, passport confiscation and unpaid wages were issues commonly faced by migrant workers. There is no freedom of expression, no freedom of assembly, and paltry women’s rights. Women need the permission of a male guardian – usually their husband, father, brother, grandfather or uncle – to marry, study abroad on government scholarships, work in many government jobs, travel abroad if aged under 25, and access reproductive healthcare. 

No protests are allowed. In fact, involvement in protests in Qatar can bag you 15 years to life imprisonment. A female blogger received three-years for Tweeting negatively about the regime. During the World Cup, Qatari ministers described the OneLove armband as “divisive,” which tells you what you need to know about their views on LGBTQIA+. Like the Saudis, the Qataris can also turn to violence when they deem it necessary. In 2022, three critics of a travel-ban law were unceremoniously “disappeared.” 

While Qatar remains a restrictive and fundamentally authoritarian monarchy, the regime has shown some signs of engagement with global ethical norms. The Qatari´s already have a longstanding relationship with the UK. Apparently the Qatari royal family already owns more of London than our own King (though not more than the Crown Estate itself). That being said, any Qatari spurs takeover is sure to leave a sour taste in the mouth. 

PCP International Finance Investment Group

While it was confirmed by the club itself that PCP were exploring a Tottenham takeover, Amanda Staveley has recently confirmed that the organisation has no plans to launch a bid. This is being perceived in the press as a snub from Tottenham and ENIC, who maintain that the club is not for sale. However, the Newcastle takeover was four years in the making, so no bids now does not necessarily mean there won’t be bids later.

So who is PCP? PCP is an investment group related to PCP Properties, a middle-eastern capital group that is often involved in middle-eastern business ventures in the UK. Amanda Staveley is a company Director. While Staveley is known for her involvement in the purchase of Newcastle, she was also involved in the 2008 takeover of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi. Stavely’s links to royal families across the middle-east are longstanding and high profile. 

It’s difficult to provide any analysis of the ethical record of PCP as it is not clear exactly which persons or companies are involved. However, a dispute between PCP and Barclays Bank in 2020 made reference to the State of Qatar. That dispute referenced PCP Capital Partners and PCP International Finance Limited – both organisations with different, albeit similar, names to PCP International Finance Investment Group. Journalists and in-the-knows may be able to shed further light on the make-up of this current investment group.

Firehawk Holdings

The club also confirmed an offer from Firehawk Holdings, led by Roger Kennedy and Wing-Fai Ng, with Matt Law stating that this was an Asian consortium.

Hong-Kong based Wing-Fai Ng is the executive director and CEO of Triller group, a Nasdaq listed company that produces an app looking to rival TikTok. His background is in restructuring and transforming financial institutions. He has been involved in a series of financial businesses, including EON Bank, and New China Life Insurance. One of the businesses that Triller manages is the fast growing Chinese Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship. In general he is heavily interested in the economic development of Hong Kong and the surroundings, but refrains from making overtly political statements. 

Information is limited, but Wing-Fai Ng appears to be a relatively typical, highly successful businessperson. Furthermore, given the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) highly aggressive turn against Taiwanese businesses, the fact that Wing-Fai Ng once served as Group Managing Director at Fubon Financial Holding Co., Taiwan’s largest financial services conglomerate, means associations between the CCP and Wing-Fai Ng are perhaps tenuous.

Wing-Fai Ng is based in Hong Kong, where the CCP has recently made a series of significant anti-democratic moves in their attempt to shut down the region’s democratic independence and align it more broadly with the centralised Communist Party. The human rights situation in Hong Kong has deteriorated rapidly since the CCP implemented the 2020 National Security Law, which has been used to criminalise dissent. Since then, over 90 NGOs, 175 trade unions, and multiple independent media outlets have disbanded under pressure. Prominent journalists and pro-democracy figures have been jailed, and high-profile trials have reinforced a pervasive climate of fear and self-censorship. Hong Kong is not the bastion of freedom and democracy that it once was. Beyond Hong Kong, the CCP´s crimes are well documented including what many refer to as the ongoing genocide of the Uyghur muslim population in China.

Roger Kennedy, the other bidder, likely refers to Roger C. Kennedy (although this is not officially confirmed). Kennedy is the Non-Executive Chairman at British-based Victoria Oil & Gas Plc and a Member at New York State Bar Association. He is on the Board of Directors at Wing-Fai Ng’s Triller Group, Inc, appointed in early 2025. 

A subsidiary of Victoria Oil & Gas was sued by communities in Cameroon via the OECD in 2018 around the negative effects of water pollution, noise and nuisance from (explosions at) the gas exploitation site, destruction of homes and the loss of household income. A remediation process is thought to be underway.

Concerns were also raised about Triller’s financial health. The organisation faced a $35.5 million lawsuit for alleged default in December of 2024.

ENIC

The insider trading situation around Spurs’ longstanding owner Joe Lewis is well known among Spurs fans. At 87 years young, Lewis pleaded guilty to insider trading, despite initially pleading not guilty in 2023, and was hit with a £4m fine after a Manhattan hearing in 2024. According to the BBC:

As part of the plea deal, one of Lewis’ companies, Broad Bay Ltd, also pleaded guilty to securities fraud and was fined $44m (£34.8m).

A substantial part of his fraudulent activity, according to an indictment, was not meant to pad his estimated worth of $6.2bn (£4.9bn). Instead, the incident with his pilot Patrick O’Connor was just one of a number of times that he passed along insider information about his companies to his private pilots, friends, personal assistants and romantic partners in order to enrich his close associates.

Joe Lewis was also sued by the Interior Ministry of Argentina for irregularities relating to his purchase of 12,000 hectares of land for a ranch in Lago Escondido. The situation is quite bizarre. According to Open Democracy, Joe Lewis, under the business moniker Hidden Valley, has had the lake fenced off from the public for 20 years. Lewis took over the land in 1996. He then built a 3.600-square-meter mansion, a guest house, stables, a soccer field, an amphitheater and a heliport. Some local outlets have accused Mr Lewis of establishing a private army of thugs to intimidate locals and keep people out.

Until recently, Joe Lewis sat at the top table of a $7.6bn empire, fronted by his main business, Tavistock. Lewis initially made it big by speculating on the British pound and Mexican peso. For better or worse, Mr Lewis has made his money as a currency trader, and lives as a tax exile, which comes with its own ethical dimension. Otherwise, he’s known for keeping his private life private, which limits the amount of information available on his dealings.

With Joe Lewis in the background after ceasing to be a ‘person of significant control’ of ENIC in 2022, the heir apparent, businesswoman and daughter of Joe Lewis, Vivian, is, like her brother Charles, a Senior Managing Director at Tavistock group. She chaired two golf and country club estates in Florida and is said, according to the Irish Daily Mail, to be in charge of the family art collection, which includes original works by Picasso, Miro, Matisse and Bacon. Vivian’s brother, Charlie, is involved in Tavistock’s restaurant business, and infrastructure projects in Fort Lauderdale. There’s not enough information in the public domain to assess whether the new Lewis’ on the block align with Tottenham’s values. Vivian hasn’t beheaded anyone or carried out any mass-executions yet, as far as we know.