Update, 29 September 2026: the Premier League has published the Commission’s decision. Read David Haigh’s new statement: Could it be football, not the UN, that finally puts the UAE’s dictators and despots in their place?
A regime that jails its critics and lectures the United Nations on justice has no business lecturing anyone. Dubai Watch is calling for severe and sustained sanctions on Manchester City, and for state regimes to be shut out of owning and sponsoring football.
David Haigh, co-founder of Dubai Watch, former Managing Director of Leeds United and a human rights lawyer who has spent over a decade acting for victims of the UAE, including Princess Latifa of Dubai and, today, Zeynab Javadli, said:
Let us call Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan what he is: a hypocrite, and a football cheat. This morning, the Vice President of the United Arab Emirates and owner of Manchester City welcomed the world to a United Nations congress in Abu Dhabi on crime prevention and the rule of law. He did so just hours after his club was reported to have been found guilty on 114 of the 115 charges brought by the Premier League. It is the football cheat preaching fair play.
You cannot lecture the world on the rule of law by day and own a club that cheats it by night. The UAE loves to be the world’s best. At everything. The tallest tower, the biggest airline, the grandest prize. Well, here is what it is best at: cheating at sport, and hiding behind PR spin.
A fine means nothing to men whose money has no limit. To them a fine is not a punishment, it is an invoice, and they will pay it and smile. So this cannot end with a fine, and it cannot end with a handful of points in a single season. It has to hurt, and keep hurting: points deductions every season, over several seasons. And it cannot stop at the club. If sponsors such as Etihad colluded in these breaches, they too should be banned from advertising in the Premier League and across football.
And make no mistake about who pays when these regimes are crossed. Right now I am fighting for Zeynab Javadli, an Azerbaijani mother whose three young daughters were torn from her arms at gunpoint, in a night-time raid by forces acting for the Dubai authorities. She is trapped in Dubai under a travel ban, charged with kidnapping her own children, and her daughters have still not been returned to her. She is not alone. Princess Latifa, Princess Haya, the critics and the prisoners: when the men who run the UAE act, it is always ordinary people who pay. In football it will be the supporters, who did nothing wrong. That is why regimes like this have no place owning our sport and using it to launder their crimes.
So let it hurt. Let it be severe, and let it be lasting. And let it be the final whistle on the UAE’s attempt to own the beautiful game, and on every despot and dictator who treats our sport as a plaything. The game was never theirs to buy. It belongs to the people in the stands, not to regimes buffing their image with the badge on their chest. Rule of law begins at home. For Sheikh Mansour, it could start with not cheating at football.
Notes to editors
Dubai Watch, founded in 2025, monitors human rights, detention and the rule of law in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the wider United Arab Emirates. David Haigh is its co-founder, a human rights lawyer and the former Managing Director of Leeds United.
The Premier League charged Manchester City on 6 February 2023 with 115 breaches of its rules, covering financial reporting from the 2009/10 to 2017/18 seasons and failures to cooperate with its investigation. An independent commission heard the case between September and December 2024.
On 25 September 2026 The Athletic and Reuters reported that the commission had upheld 114 of the 115 charges. The Premier League has not published the decision and no sanction has been announced. Manchester City has said the process remains ongoing and confidential, and the club is expected to appeal.
On 26 September 2026 Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan welcomed delegates to the 15th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Abu Dhabi, referring to advancing the rule of law.
Zeynab Javadli is a client of David Haigh and a case documented by Dubai Watch. An Azerbaijani former world-championship gymnast, she was first granted custody of her three daughters by a Dubai court; that ruling was later overturned in proceedings a United Nations submission called “neither independent nor impartial.” On 2 June 2026 she and her daughters were taken in a night-time raid; she was held for eight days and charged with kidnapping her own children. She remains trapped in Dubai under a travel ban, her daughters not returned. Her case is at dubaiwatch.org/zeynab-javadli.