Argentine striker and Inter Milan forward Lautaro Martinez has been offered a mind-blowing four-year contract offer worth €60 million to sever ties with the Nerazzurri.
According to reliable sources, the unnamed Saudi club has extended a four-season contract proposal to Lautaro Martinez, offering an impressive salary of 60 million euros annually.
However, the Argentine striker did not give the green light to start negotiations with the Saudi party due to the Saudi human rights violations.
Saudi Arabia has been long known as the Kingdom of silence and repression, where human rights activists and opponents are prosecuted, forcibly disappeared, arbitrary detained, and tortured in hell-like prisons.
Jamal Khashoggi’s and Abdul Rahim Al-Hwaiti’s murder was a turning point for the Saudi international reputation. The shadow cast by the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi has hung over MBS’s image.
However, human rights organisations have long accused Saudi Arabia of using sport to whitewash its poor human rights record.
In this regard, Amnesty International warned that Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has embarked on a program of “sportswashing” to try to obscure Saudi Arabia’s extremely poor human rights record.
Peter Frankental, Amnesty International UK’s Economics Affairs Programme Director, said” “Ronaldo’s big-money transfer to Al Nassr and Messi’s engagement by the Saudi authorities as a tourism ambassador are both part of Riyadh’s aggressive sportswashing program, with the authorities seeking to exploit the celebrity appeal of elite sport to deflect attention from the country’s appalling human rights record.”
“On a single day last year, the Saudi authorities executed 81 people – many after grossly unfair trials – while heavy prison sentences are being handed down to human rights defenders and women’s rights activists, and there’s still been no justice for Jamal Khashoggi’s terrible murder.
“Footballers like Ronaldo and Messi have huge profiles and we’d like to see them resisting being used as the famous faces of sportswashing, including by speaking out about human rights issues in both Saudi Arabia and Qatar.”
Saudi authorities have poured vast amounts of money into sporting ventures like Messi and Ronaldo’s friendly match in the Kingdom.
Much like with Formula One and professional golf, the world’s biggest oil exporter has in recent years leveraged its immense wealth to assert itself on the eSports stage, hosting glitzy conferences and snapping up established tournament organisers.
Last January, the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund launched the Savvy Gaming Group, which acquired top eSports firms ESL Gaming and FACEIT in deals reportedly worth a total of $1.5 billion.
Other media reports earlier revealed that the Riyadh-based Public Investment Fund acquired more than $3 billion worth of stock in three U.S. video-game makers during the fourth quarter, according to a regulatory filing. They include Activision Blizzard Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.
