LIV Golf confirms latest big signing as PIF / PGA Tour deal looms
LIV Golf signs one of D.C.'s most prominent lobbying firms amid congressional probe.
LIV Golf has snapped up the services of one of Washington D.C.'s most prominent lobbying firms, Akin Gump Strauss & Feld, in a bid to help them navigate their way through Congress.
Akin Gump Strauss & Feld is representing the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) amid a congressional probe into LIV Golf.
PIF insists that some of the inquiry is subject to immunity.
PGA Tour chief operating officer Rob Price and board member Jimmy Dunne were sworn in at a Senate subcommittee hearing two months ago in D.C. to discuss a shock new alliance between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Saudi PIF.
Dunne and Price faced US lawmakers on July 11 to answer questions about the new 'framework agreement' with LIV Golf's bankrollers.
It was expected to be an explosive hearing but it was made all the more tantalising because 276 pages of documents revealing communications between parties involved in the deal were released shortly before the hearing began.
GolfMagic rounded up 10 of the biggest bombshells to come out of the hearing.
Senate Richard Blumenthal, who is the chairman of the committee, has been publicly criticial of the deal.
According to Politico, the lawyer who is representing LIV Golf Raphael Prober, has written to Blumenthal arguing Saudi PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan "cannot participate in any public hearing that is part of an unbounded inquiry into the PIF's past, present and future interests and investments."
Prober is said to have written in the letter:
Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has requested testimony from PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan since June.
Politico's report adds:
The latest update comes with just three more tournaments on the LIV Golf League schedule, with events set for Chicago, Saudi Arabai and Miami over the next two months.
Earlier this week, rumours were flying that a PGA Tour star could be heading over to LIV Golf after being snubbed from the US Ryder Cup team.
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