International Olympic Committee suspends former Olympic power broker Sheikh Ahmad for 15 years

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has imposed a 15-year suspension on former Olympic power broker Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait. This decision comes after his conviction for forgery was upheld on appeal earlier this year by a Swiss criminal appeals court.

The IOC executive board approved Sheikh Ahmad’s sanction, citing it as “a betrayal of his IOC Member’s oath, as well as the seriousness of the damage to the IOC’s reputation,” according to a decision obtained by Associated Press.

The suspension of 15 years commences from the date of his prior ban due to a separate incident of unethical conduct during an Olympic Council of Asia election, which was a three-year sanction imposed on July 27 of the previous year.

Sheikh Ahmad, who will turn 61 shortly after the Paris Olympics 2024 concludes in August, will be 74 when this latest punishment expires. As per IOC rules, his membership will cease at the age of 80. However, the Olympic Charter permits the annual meeting of IOC members to expel a colleague for betraying their oath.

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Sheikh Ahmad led the Olympic Council of Asia before joining IOC

Before joining the IOC in 1992, Sheikh led the Olympic Council of Asia, an organization founded by his father in Kuwait. He enjoyed a long-standing alliance with the current IOC president Thomas Bach, actively supporting Bach’s election campaign in 2023.

Following his indictment in Geneva in 2018, the Kuwaiti royal voluntarily suspended himself as an IOC member and stepped down from his position as the leader of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC).

In January, Sheikh Ahmad, along with his former English lawyer, a Kuwaiti aide, and a lawyer based in Geneva, had their convictions from September 2021 upheld. The charges were related to orchestrating a fraudulent arbitration case a decade ago.

The appeals court in Geneva amended the Sheikh’s prison sentence to a two-year suspended sentence, deferred for a probationary period of three years.

Sheikh served as a senior official of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) from 2015 to 2017. However, he withdrew his candidacy for re-election when federal prosecutors in Brooklyn implicated him in steering bribes to soccer officials in Asia. He consistently denied any wrongdoing and was not indicted.