Qadbak: Concerns rising over BMW-Sauber buyout
October 6, 2009 by Negative Camber
Filed under People & Events, Top Story
First it was Sir Frank Williams who had reservations about BMW-Sauber’s new owners and now you can add Martin Whitmarsh to that distinguished list. It seems that as time rolls on and the layers of the onion are peeled back, there is reason for pause over the Qadbak acquisition of BMW-Suaber’s F1 team.
Last week Williams had expressed concern over the details of the acquisition; namely the people behind the money and the long-term intentions of the team. Now McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh has voiced his concerns that one of the players in Qadbak was Russell King. King was jailed on insurance fraud in 1991 and was part of a group that attempted to create a Dubai-team reports Jonathan Noble of Autosport. Apparently he was speaking with McLaren about that opportunity and this gave Whitmarsh reason for pause. Not a ringing endorsement for King.
Simple searching will reveal that King had his assets frozen over unpaid debt in Jersey and was involved in the Notts County club acquisition as well. That acquisition was met with concern by league officials who demanded to know who was behind the money before clearing the sale of the club. It was eventually revealed that two Middle East families were involved but no other details were given.
Even more strange is that during the process it was revealed that former Pakistani Prime Minister, Moeen Qureshi, was part of the Qadbak consortium but he denies knowing anything about the group. It was later suggested by Qadbak that this means he “is a member of the family, not one of the investors”. Nice move Mr. PR guy.
Autosport’s Noble quoted Whitmarsh as saying: “I think you’re referring to Russell King, and I have to say I started being concerned for Sauber when I heard his name.” This brings serious concern and in the same article expertly penned by Mr. Noble, it is suggested that the FOTA meeting did discuss the investment. Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali was appealing the BMW’s due diligence and was trying to take the high road by suggesting that they had vetted Qadbak prior to making the deal.
That seems likely but it also seems likely that the due diligence process could have been short circuited due to the time frame in which they had to put the deal together. An 80 million pound deal in a matter of weeks is very fast no matter how much money you have.
It remains to be seen but I submit that the plot thickens. As a fan of F1, you can see how this is concerning to FOTA and others within the paddock. Unfortunately all we see is some high level reservations regarding BMW-Sauber being allowed on the grid next year and that irritates us as fans.
As with anything in F1, the plot thickens the more you dig and by the time you get to the desired depth on a story, you forgot what you were digging for and no one really cares anyway.
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I have raised this concern in other forums as well as other F1 fans. No biases here, but I am concerned with F1 teams getting backing from “mysterious” entities.
Next thing you know F1 is used as vehicle of money laundering and worst still by entities working for some terrorist organizations.
With all the scandals F1 has got embroiled in recent years, this kind of publicity will be last nail in coffin for F1.
I find it curious that despite the fact that we are witnessing the end of the manufacturer teams era, there are just as many new teams willing to step in to replace them. Of course, when one considers that Formula 1 is the world’s leading instrument (outside of the banking sector) to move large wealth holdings it should not surprise anyone that most of these new teams have ties to either Swiss banking institutions or Arab holdings companies.
With the American dollar under siege from all other currencies and, more importantly, sliding in value against hard commodities like gold & oil, it’s now apparent that persons or institutions with large US dollar holdings are dumping the dollar in favour of Swiss francs (which has real gold reserves backing it).
For decades, the untold story of Formula 1 is how much wealth is moved internationally through the sport. The lavish expenditures and the astronomical team budgets are just a fraction of the total volume of money in play. With team budget cap regulations having been scrapped, F1 is able to maintain it’s appeal for individuals who wish to move dollars out the country without detection.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/5586543/Is-this-the-death-of-the-dollar.html
To be sure, Swiss bankers have been busy over the past year, jet-setting around the world collecting large deposits. The Arabs are flush with US dollars and they are busy raising castles out of the sand in an effort to deplete their dollar holdings. The Chinese, meanwhile, are trying to spend their dollars even faster on a 30 yr stockpile of raw materials to sustain their unreal growth.
The fact that the sport is losing the manufacturers and acquiring new participants that are little more than nefarious shell companies without pretense shows that F1 is becoming less about the sport and more about … something else.
While one can speculate that Qadbak is a Qatari-dominated company, it is worth noting that the name is probably an acronym for the entire region: one can speculate that QADBAK stands for Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Kuwait.