As part of his attempts to whitewash hos poor human rights record, Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) is reportedly offering Lionel Messi up to $400 million a year to join a Saudi club.
Saudi Arabia is regularly criticised by human rights groups for its detention and torture of political opponents and for its intervention in the military conflict in Yemen, which has led to thousands of civilian deaths. The murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 also led to worldwide outrage.
In this regard, MBS had poured vast amounts of money into sporting ventures to whitewash his image abroad.
Messi is currently a Paris Saint Germain player, but his contract expires in the summer making him a free agent in less than six months.
Messi has not agreed to renew terms at the Parc des Princes according to L’Equipe, which gives hope to other parties such as Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal.
Earlier last year, superstar Cristiano Ronaldo joined the state-owned Saudi football club Al Nassr FC for reportedly a whopping US$241 million over 2.5 years.
Rights groups commented on Ronaldo’s deal to join state-owned Saudi football club Al Nassr FC, saying that the deal includes boosting MBS’ image.
The rights groups linked Ronaldo’s deal to MBS’s attempts to cover up the Kingdom’s poor human rights record, saying MBS’s regime sought to draw the international attention to such deals away of the kingdom’s poor human rights record.
To achieve his goal, MBS needs to project Saudi Arabia as a modern, internationally competitive nation with a national rather than a religious identity.
Earlier, Richard Edelman, the CEO of the $1bn public relations firm Edelman, signed $9.6m in deals with the Saudi government over the past four years to sanitize the kingdom’s image.
The work, which was directed at American audiences and was projected to net Edelman more than $5.6m (£4.6m) in fees, included sending regular press releases that celebrated topics such as “mainstreaming women in business” and “doubling down efforts to empower women and youth”, the paper revealed.
One release featured a quote from Princess Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, who “commend[ed] the B20 Saudi Arabia’s deep commitment to the empowerment of women”, including an “inclusive policy development process” that she hoped would “remain as one of the Saudi presidency’s lasting legacies”.
The report also pointed out that Edelman’s foreign agent filings suggest that by the time its work is completed, the firm will have earned more than $3m from the company developing Neom.
On 31 May 2022, only days before Edelman published his blogpost warning of the growing divide between democracy and autocracy, he signed a $787,500 (£652,609) contract to provide the Saudi ministry of culture with “PR and communications services”.
