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.[2] His involvement in the Olympic Council of Asia and International Olympic Committee extended until 2023 when he was banned due to election interference.[3][4][5][6][7] Additionally, he was a member of the FIFA Council from 2015 to 2017 but resigned following his implication in the FIFA bribery scandal.[8][9]
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.[10] 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,[11] and was appointed the director of the National Security Agency in July 2006.[3]
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.[12]
On 18 June 2023, Ahmad was appointed Kuwait's Minister of Defense.[13] 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.[3]
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.[14]
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.[17] In March 2011, MPs aligned with former Kuwait prime minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed (Marzouq Al-Ghanim and Adel Al-Saraawi)[12] 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.[18][19]
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.[20][18] Ahmad Al-Fahad appeared on local channel Al-Watan TV describing his claims.[21]
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.[22] 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.[23]
In March 2015, Kuwait's public prosecutor dropped all investigations into the alleged coup plot and Ahmad Al-Fahad read a public apology on Kuwait state television renouncing the coup allegations.[15] Concurrently, Athbi Al-Fahad, his sibling and former head of state security, together with individuals known as the "Fintas Group," engaged in a disinformation effort. They created and distributed a grainy, fabricated video that falsely depicted the head of the constitutional court accepting a bribe, insinuating that this act influenced the Public Prosecutor’s decision to cease the investigation. In the aftermath, Athbi Al-Fahad and the members of the Fintas Group faced legal proceedings and were convicted by a criminal court for their roles in these activities.[18][24][25]
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," issued 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.[26]
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.[27] Shortly thereafter, Ahmed temporarily stepped aside from his role at the International Olympic Committee, pending an ethics committee hearing into the allegations.[15][28]
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.[29][30]
On September 10, 2021, Sheikh Ahmed was convicted of 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.[31][2][32][33] 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.[34][23]
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, who pleaded guilty in a US court to taking $950,000 in bribes from the Olympic Council of Asia.[9]
In his guilty plea, Lai said he understood "co-conspirator 2" identified as Sheikh Ahmed was the source of the bribes.[15] 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.[35][36] Ahmed "vigorously" denied any wrongdoing.[37]
In August 2023, US court documents implicated Sheikh Ahmad, his brother Dhari Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, and close associate Husain Al-Musallam in a bribery and racketeering scheme connected to the State of Qatar. Additionally, a shell company named Beriza Limited, also mentioned in the documents, is suspected of being controlled by Ahmad. This suspicion arises particularly because the company later made payments to Ahmad’s lawyer Matthew Parish in relation to a fraudulent arbitration case, leading to criminal convictions for both Ahmad and Parish. Bank statements from the Qatari embassy in London indicate that these entities received millions of dollars from Qatar. These funds are alleged to have been used as bribes to influence FIFA officials in support of Qatar's bid to host the World Cup.[38]
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.[39] American prosecutors "told their Kuwaiti counterparts they wanted to establish if the suspects made other payments to [Richard] Lai, or if their accounts were used to wire possible bribe payments to other soccer officials."[40]
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.”[41] 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.[4] 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”.[42]
In May 2024, following the upholding of his Swiss fraud conviction in December 2023, Sheikh Ahmad was banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for 15 years, commencing from the start of his initial three-year ban. The IOC cited "a betrayal of his oath as an IOC Member and the severity of the harm to the IOC's reputation" as reasons for the extended suspension.[43]
^Bayle, Emmanuel; Clastres, Patrick (2018). Global Sport Leaders: A Biographical Analysis of International Sport Management (1 ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN3319767526.
