A wealthy construction company run by the family of terrorist Osama bin Laden has emerged as a shock front-runner to buy Newcastle United, a source with links to the club claimed last night.
The Saudi Binladen Group, whose chief executive is Osama's half-brother, Bakr bin Laden, and which was founded by their father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden, is said to be considering a £300millionplus deal to buy the club and then carry out a lucrative redevelopment of St James' Park and land surrounding the ground.
Although the Bin Laden family publicly distanced itself from the founder of Al-Qaeda years before he claimed responsibility for the September 11 atrocities in 2001, any takeover would be football's most controversial yet, as well as taking the number of foreign-owned teams in the Premier League to 10, or half of England's biggest clubs.
Newcastle owner Mike Ashley has been dogged by rumours, always denied, that he wishes to sell the club ever since his takeover just over a year ago.
However, last night a private investment company from America, InterMedia Partners, confirmed reports that they had been approached by a third party about buying the club.
Despite Newcastle describing reports that Ashley had quoted them a price of £420m as 'absolute nonsense', the Americans' statement said: 'InterMedia was approached about a deal, made no offer and has no interest.'
But the most astonishing development is the suggestion that a firm connected to the world's most wanted terrorist could be interested in buying the club.
Although the offices of SBG in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, were open yesterday, there was no one in authority available to comment on the speculation.