Something jumped out at me immediately last night, and I must admit that I was confused by it.
Mancini, on the pitch, said "I would like to give credit to the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi; Sheikh Mansour, Sheikh Mohammed and Khaldoon Al-Mubarak..."
Now, Man City have always maintained that they are 100% owned by Sheikh Mansour, and NOT through ADIA or any other subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Royal Family. This is important for several reasons; firstly, it would mean that we are essentially owned by the government of another country and secondly, it would mean that we are directly funded by "oil money".
I'll come to the oil money thing later, but I read something on the OS that I've quoted here:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.mcfc.co.uk/News/Team-news/2011/May/Roberto-Mancini-says-this-was-for-the-fans" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.mcfc.co.uk/News/Team-news/20 ... r-the-fans</a>
"All the credit for what we have achieved this season has to go to the players," said Roberto, "who worked so hard for us to win what we did. But I also want to give credit to the Royal Family of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mansour and our chairman, Khaldoon al Mubarak. But what this team has done is dedicated to our fans, who have suffered for so long but can now start to dream about a better future."
That isn't what he said. He thanked Sheikh Mohammed as well as part of the ownership team.
Sheikh Mohammed is the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Commander of their military. A few weeks ago, he was caught
building his own mercenary army using companies charged with human rights abuses. Now, he has been called "the defacto ruler of Abu Dhabi and the UAE", and he's almost certainly the next President. The human rights abuses that occur there (from human trafficking, to confiscating passports, to creating a slave class, to 'sketchy' employment conditions, disallowing unions, sexual abuse of female workers, etc, etc) fall directly at his door. Under pressure from Western leaders about the Human Trafficking, he made a 55m donation to the UN to help fight the issue. That's about £10m, or Tevez's wages last year.
I was never worried about this type of thing when Sheikh Mansour was seen as the 100% owner of City. Although his wealth did come from oil originally, he's made billions in smart business moves. He was a personal owner using his personal wealth, and whilst he certainly does have power in Abu Dhabi, he isn't the guy in charge so these abuses cannot be laid at his door.
However, if we are owned by more than Sheikh Mansour, and he is a figurehead for our ownership as was suggested earlier, who exactly owns ADUG? Is Sheikh Mansour the 100% owner or are there other investors? Why does it say on the OS that Mansour 100% owns the club, when we have our manager thanking a completely different guy as part of our "owners"? Why was this edited out of the comment on the OS?
I would quite like to know if we are owned by a human rights abuser again or not.
