Senator demands information, testimony from LIV Golf's Saudi leader
A Senate subcommittee is seeking, in no uncertain terms, information from Saudi Arabia over its planned agreement with the PGA Tour.
A U.S. senator is demanding that the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the financial foundation of LIV Golf, comply with a congressional request for testimony and information.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has released a letter to PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan disputing the contention that Al-Rumayyan is an “inappropriate witness” in the Senate’s investigation of the ongoing PIF-PGA Tour agreement. The subcommittee, Blumenthal wrote, “is seeking to understand the scope of PIF’s U.S.-based investments and PIF’s plans for the PGA Tour and other U.S. entities.”
Al-Rumayyan, a confidant of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, spearheaded both the development of LIV Golf and a partnership agreement with the PGA Tour. Al-Rumayyan and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, along with a select few other individuals, reached the stunning agreement that shocked the golf world in June and ended, at least temporarily, hostilities between the two tours.
Significant questions remain about the degree of Al-Rumayyan’s involvement and authority in the proposed new venture. While PGA Tour officials have contended that they will control the direction of the new entity formed by combining the tour and the assets of the PIF, Al-Rumayyan would presumably control the purse strings and, as chairman of the planned venture, will have a significant voice in the direction of the enterprise going forward.
Al-Rumayyan, according to Blumenthal, has asserted that he is “a minister bound by the Kingdom’s laws regarding the confidentiality of certain information,” and thus cannot or will not speak on the specifics of the PIF-PGA Tour agreement. Blumenthal’s letter to Al-Rumayyan pushed back hard on that contention, in terms of both optics and legality.
“The suggestion that your role as a Saudi Foreign Minister shields you from testifying about PIF’s commercial activities is both deeply troubling and unsupported as a legal matter,” Blumenthal wrote. He noted that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which had been overseeing legal action between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour prior to settlement, has already rejected Al-Rumayyan’s claims of a right to privacy because of his status within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
“In short,” Blumenthal wrote, “PIF cannot have it both ways: if it wants to engage with the United States commercially, it must be subject to United States law and oversight. That oversight includes this Subcommittee’s inquiry.”
Blumenthal has demanded that Al-Rumayyan provide, no later than Aug. 18, both “records regarding PIF’s current and planned commercial activity in the United States” and an agreement to appear before the subcommittee on Sept. 13. Al-Rumayyan had declined to appear at a previous hearing of the subcommittee in July because of undisclosed “scheduling conflicts.” Blumenthal added in the letter that Al-Rumayyan’s “apparent reluctance to voluntarily appear raises questions about the veracity of your previously cited scheduling conflicts.”
Blumenthal further threatened to use more forceful means to compel Al-Rumayyan to appear, and to provide documentation, to the subcommittee.
