Sheikh Ahmed Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Sheikh Ahmed Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah succeeded to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after the death of his father, Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, who was killed by a shooter in August 1990. He also became President of the Kuwaiti Olympic Committee and the Olympic Council of Asia.

Sheikh Ahmed studied at Kuwait University and the Kuwait Military Academy. He served five years in the military, ending that career as a major. In Kuwait he emerged as a powerful politician, serving as Chairman of Public Authority for Youth Sports with a rank of a Cabinet Minister (2000-01), Minister of Information (2001-03), General Secretary of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC / 2005), and Minister of Energy (2003-06). In July 2006 he was made Minister of National Security.

In 2012 Sheikh Ahmed became President of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC). By then he was one of the most powerful people in international sports, known as a “kingmaker.” In December 2015, however, Ahmad was convicted of “disrespect to the public prosecutor and attributing a remark to the country’s ruler without a special permission from the emir’s court,” and was given a suspended six-month prison sentence and a fine of 1,000 Kuwaiti Dinars. In January 2016, the Kuwaiti appeals court overturned the prior ruling and cleared Sheikh Ahmed of all charges.

In November 2018, Sheikh Ahmed was charged in Switzerland, with four others, with forgery related to staging a sham arbitration in Switzerland to authenticate a fake coup video. On 10 September 2021, Sheikh Ahmed was convicted of forgery, with the four other defendants, but planned to appeal. Sheikh Ahmed was suspended by the IOC after the Swiss charges but remains an IOC Member as of November 2022. He did step down in 2021 as President of the Olympic Council of Asia. He was President of the Kuwaiti Olympic Committee through 2014, and of ANOC through 2018.