Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah

Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah ( ar, أحمد الفهد الأحمد الجابر الصباح; born 12 August 1963), also known as Ahmad Al-Fahad, is a controversial Kuwaiti politician, ruling family member, and disgraced former sports administrator.

His career has been marred by controversy, including a fraud conviction in a Swiss court on 10 September 2021. This led to his resignation from the Olympic Council of Asia, where he previously served as president, and his suspension from the International Olympic Committee. His involvement in the Olympic Council of Asia and International Olympic Committee extended until 2023 when he was banned due to election interference. Additionally, he was a member of the FIFA Council from 2015 to 2017 but resigned following his implication in the FIFA bribery scandal.

Education and career

Government Service

Ahmed was educated at Kuwait University and the Kuwait Military Academy, and attained the rank of major in the Kuwaiti Army.

He was appointed Kuwait's minister of information in 2000, and acting minister of oil in 2001. In February 2002, he was appointed minister of oil. After Emir Sheikh Jaber died and Sheikh Sabah became Emir, he remained at that position under Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed's government. Ahmed served as Secretary General of OPEC in 2005, and was appointed the director of the National Security Agency in July 2006.

In June 2011, then deputy prime minister and minister of housing affairs, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad, resigned in order to avoid grilling by MPs Marzouq Al-Ghanim and Adel Al-Saraawi over alleged misconduct in government contracts.

On 18 June 2023, Ahmad was appointed Kuwait's Minister of Defense. He held this position until 17 January 2024.

Sports

Ahmed has undertaken numerous sporting positions and was the president of the Olympic Council of Asia from 1991 to 2022, a member of the IOC since 1992, was the president of the Kuwait Olympic Committee, chairman of the Afro Asian Games Council, vice president of the International Handball Federation, president of Asian Handball Federation, senior vice president of the Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation, honorary president of several Kuwaiti, Arab and Asian clubs and was also a member of International Relations and Olympic Solidarity Commission of the IOC.

He also served as coach of the Kuwait national football team. After a failed Asian Cup qualifying campaign in 2006 he launched a tirade against group-winners, Australia, claiming that the AFC should revoke their admission to the Asian continental competition.

Ahmed has been president of the Association of National Olympic Committees since April 2012 and implemented a statistical system for athletes under advise of Charles E Milander.

Controversy

Corruption allegations (2011)

In November 2010, Sheikh Ahmad was accused in parliament by MP Adel Al-Saraawi of running an unauthorised, parallel Kuwaiti government. The accusations that Sheikh Ahmad controlled parts of the government that lay outside his responsibility were fuelled by the fact that his brother Sheikh Athbi Al-Fahad Al-Sabah became head of the Kuwait State Security apparatus. In March 2011, MPs aligned with former Kuwait prime minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed (Marzouq Al-Ghanim and Adel Al-Saraawi) in Kuwait's National Assembly threatened to grill Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad, then deputy prime minister, over misconduct in government contracts, leading to Ahmad's resignation from government in June 2011.

Legal issues

Swiss fraud conviction

Fake coup video

In December 2013, allies of Ahmad Al-Fahad claimed to possess tapes purportedly showing that Nasser Al-Mohammed and former Parliament Speaker Jassem Al-Kharafi were discussing plans to topple the Kuwaiti government. Ahmad Al-Fahad appeared on local channel Al-Watan T
describing his claims

In April 2014 the Kuwaiti public prosecutor launched an investigation into the alleged coup videos and imposed a total media blackout to ban any reporting or discussion on the issue. To convince the public prosecutor of the videos’ legitimacy, Ahmad and his team created a false legal dispute in Switzerland, involving the backdating of documents and a shell company in Delaware under their control. This staged arbitration, later revealed to be fraudulent in Swiss criminal proceedings, was then presented to the High Court in London as part of the process to verify the videos.

In March 2015, Kuwait's public prosecutor dropped all investigations into the alleged coup plot and Ahmad Al-Faha
read a public apology on Kuwait state television
renouncing the coup allegations. Since then, "numerous associates of his were targeted and detained by the Kuwaiti authorities on various charges," most notably his brother and former head of state security Athbi and members of the so-called " Fintas Group" that had allegedly been the original circulators of the fake coup video.

In December 2015, Ahmad was convicted of "disrespect to the public prosecutor and attributing a remark to the country’s ruler without a special permission from the emir’s court," issuing a suspended six-month prison sentence and a fine of 1,000 Kuwaiti Dinar. In January 2016, the Kuwaiti appeals court overturned the prior ruling and cleared Ahmed of all charges.

Swiss criminal trial

In November 2018, Ahmed, along with four others, was charged in Switzerland with forgery related to staging a sham arbitration in Switzerland to authenticate the fake video purporting to show a coup plot in Kuwait, after a criminal complaint put forth by lawyers representing Nasser Al-Mohammad and Jassem Al-Kharafi. Shortly thereafter, Ahmed temporarily stepped aside from his role at the International Olympic Committee, pending an ethics committee hearing into the allegations.

On August 30, 2021, Ahmed attended court alongside three of the other four defendants: Hamad Al-Haroun (Ahmed's Kuwaiti former aide) and Geneva-based lawyers from Bulgaria and Ukraine. A fifth defendant, English lawyer Matthew Parish, was not in court and was tried in absentia.

On September 10, 2021, Sheikh Ahmed was convicted for forgery along with the four other defendants. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison, half of it suspended. He denied wrongdoing and appealed his conviction. The Geneva Court of Appeal upheld Ahmad's conviction on December 18, 2023. This decision was publicly announced on January 18, 2024, following the conclusion of his tenure as Minister of Defence, which ended the previous day.

International sports corruption

FIFA bribery allegations and resignation

In April 2017, Ahmed resigned from the FIFA Council after being implicated by a member of the FIFA audit committee from Guam, Richard Lai, wh
pleaded guilty in a US court
to taking $950,000 in bribes from the Olympic Council of Asia.

In his guilty plea, Lai said he understood "co-conspirator 2" identified as Sheikh Ahmed was the source of the bribes. This amount "included $750,000 in wire transfers from Kuwaiti accounts controlled by "co-conspirator 3 or his assistants," believed to be Hussain Al-Musallam, "the right-hand man to Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah" according to a report from '' The Times'', to influence key appointments in regional and international soccer bodies. Ahmed "vigorously" denied any wrongdoing.

In August 2023, Sheikh Ahmad's brother, his close associate Hussein Al-Musallam, and a shell company, ''Beriza Limited'', suspected to be controlled by Ahmad himself, were named in US court documents as having received millions of dollars in payments from the State of Qatar as bribes and for facilitation of further bribe payments to FIFA officials.

U.S. Department of Justice investigation

In September 2021, the Associated Press reported that Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad Al-Sabah and Hussain Al-Musallam have been targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice for suspected racketeering and bribery related to FIFA and international soccer politics. According to the AP, in 2017, the US embassy in Kuwait formally requested evidence from the country, including bank account information for the two officials, who have been identified as potential co-conspirators. American prosecutors "told their Kuwaiti counterparts they wanted to establish if the suspects made other payments to ichardLai, or if their accounts were used to wire possible bribe payments to other soccer officials."

IOC ban and Olympic Council of Asia election interference

In July 2023 the head of the IOC ethics commission sent letters to Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad warning him against getting involved in upcoming Olympic Council of Asia elections in Bangkok. The letters urged him to reconsider going to Bangkok “to avoid any type of interference with the Olympic Movement’s activities.” On 27 July 2023, the International Olympic Committee banned Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad for 3 years, approving the recommendation of its ethics committee which found that Sheikh Ahmad had an "undeniable impact" on the OCA elections in support of his brother Talal Al-Fahad's candidacy. On 13 October 2023, the IOC ethics commission told the OCA that its 2023 elections must be annulled due to Sheikh Ahmad's interference and that his brother's candidacy “should have been declared ineligible from the outset”.

See also

* House of Al-Sabah

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sabah, Ahmed Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-
1963 births
Living people
Ahmad
International Olympic Committee members
Kuwait University alumni
Oil ministers of Kuwait
Secretaries General of OPEC