Al-Mubarak: the tightrope walker who made a rare misstep over City charges
Club chair helped to make Abu Dhabi a world power, but his stance on financial misdeeds is embarrassing the royal family and his next task may be to sell up In fighting to the end, al-Mubarak appears to have broken a cardinal law of diplomacy 9 Oct 2026 - The Guardian Rob Draper No one better understands the precarious tightrope Abu Dhabi walks when it tries to balance its relationships with western Europe while weighing the complex geopolitics of the Gulf region than Manchester City’s chair, Khaldoon al-Mubarak. He was eight when his father, ambassador Khalifa Ahmed Abdel Aziz al-Mubarak, left the family’s Paris apartment for work on 9 February 1984, and was assassinated on the street by a Palestinian terrorist. And no one outside the emirate’s royal family could be more wrapped up in the project of making and maintaining Abu Dhabi as a significant and secure world power and the dominant member of the United Arab Emirates, a nation state still only 55 years old. His paternal grandfath...
