Hatice Cengiz was set to marry Al-Arab News journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was killed while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. After Newcastle United’s takeover by the Saudi Arabia-backed consortium, she said it is a ‘real shame’ that the club’s fans were celebrating Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the new owner while she fought for justice. 

Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian journalist, was a critic of the Crown Prince. After his death, a CIA-backed intelligence report concluded that bin Salman is likely to have approved an operation to kill or capture Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate. The country, empire, however denied the allegations. 

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Newcastle United’s takeover, an approximately 18-month affair, had been deferred before as Premier League authorities faced pressure to block the transaction over human rights abuses and alleged broadcast piracy in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-led consortium – Public Investment Fund (PIF) – is chaired by bin Salman. 

Talking about how she is disappointed about the takeover of the English club by her fiance’s alleged killer, Hatice Cengiz told Sky Sports, “It is so sad, it is a real shame for Newcastle and English football.”

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The new face of Newcastle United, Amanda Staveley, who now sits on the board as chief executive officer of PCP Capital Partners, said Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is a sovereign wealth fund independent of the gulf nation.

However, Cengiz, who is Turkish, claimed that the prince and the empire will still be in control of Newcastle United. 

“It doesn’t make sense because everyone knows the government [in Saudi Arabia] controls everything. The current Saudi regime has a crown prince who is managing everything in the country. The point is this… how do the players, the fans and the director of Newcastle accept this situation? I am really sad about this point. I guess money is more important than anything in this life.”

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 “I want to remind them there are some values more [important] than money. It’s so heart-breaking for me to remind the West of these values,” she added. 

With the takeover, Newcastle now has the wealthiest owners in club football. 

“What I’ve been doing since his murder is seeking justice for Jamal every day, every chance that I found or every place I can go and ask more. Then suddenly, I saw the news and people were talking about the takeover and I said ‘please, do not do that, please be respectful to yourself’,” Cengiz told BBC.