UK government officials have insisted Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not intervene in the Newcastle takeover saga amid reports he was asked to by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
A Daily Mail report has claimed Bin Salman, chairman of the Middle East state’s Public Investment Fund, the 80% majority partner in a consortium which agreed a deal to buy the club in April last year, urged the government to help remove stumbling blocks in the £300m-plus sale, which collapsed in July.
However, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman denied he had done so and said he had asked long-standing aide Eddie Lister to simply check on the progress of the talks.
The spokesman told reporters: "This was a commercial matter for the parties concerned and the government was not involved at any point in the takeover talks on the sale."
Pressed on whether Mr Johnson played any part, the No 10 official replied: "No, the Prime Minister didn’t intervene. The government was not involved at any point in the takeover talks."
Kate Allen, the UK director of human rights organisation Amnesty International, said in a statement that the Mail report illustrated the takeover was "always more than just a commercial transaction" and that in reality it was an attempt by the Middle East state to "sportswash" its reputation.
Allen said: "The bid to buy Newcastle was a blatant example of Saudi sportswashing, so it’s worrying that the Prime Minister would accede in any way to pressure from the crown prince over the deal.
"Reports that Mohammed Bin Salman made threats about possible damage to UK-Saudi relations if the deal didn’t go ahead only illustrates that this was always more than just a commercial transaction within the football world.
"At the time that the crown prince was putting this pressure on No 10, the world was still reeling from the fall-out over Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Saudi human rights activists like Loujain Al Hathloul were languishing in jail, and Saudi warplanes were indiscriminately bombing Yemen.
"This whole tangled affair only underlines how there needs to be a proper overhaul of the Premier League’s owners’ and directors’ test to provide proper human rights scrutiny of who is trying to buy into the glamour and prestige of English football."
The Mail reported Bin Salman had privately urged Johnson in June to reconsider the "wrong conclusion" reached by the Premier League over the deal.
"We expect the English Premier League to reconsider and correct its wrong conclusion," the prince is said to have warned the Prime Minister.
The claim comes after Johnson this week ordered a review into the collapse of the financial firm Greensill Capital amid concern over former Prime Minister David Cameron’s lobbying on its behalf.
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