The Victorian Racing Tribunal has fined a Bahrain-based businessman for claiming he did not know a man now in jail, only to later for it to be revealed it was his brother-in-law.
Nader AlaAli has been fined $10,000 by the Victorian Racing Tribunal after being found guilty of giving misleading evidence to Racing Victoria stewards during an investigation surrounding jailed Phoenix Thoroughbreds founder Amer Abdulaziz Salman.
Salman’s racing operation included Golden Slipper winner Farnan and Group 1-winning mare Loving Gaby. He is currently in jail for conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The case centred on AlaAli’s relationship with Salman, after AlaAli’s company Brookdale Racing purchased Phoenix Thoroughbreds horses.
The sale went through in 2024 for $3.17 million following the collapse of Salman’s global racing empire.
It was reported on Monday that AlaAli claimed to Victorian Stewards that he had only “heard of” Salman and had not met him.
It was later conceded AlaAli had been Salman’s brother-in-law for about 20 years.
According to reports, the tribunal found AlaAli’s answers were “intentionally evasive, incomplete, and misleading in the extreme”, ruling he breached AR232(i).
AlaAli was initially fined $20,000 by stewards in 2025, but the Victorian Racing Tribunal reduced the penalty to $10,000 following a de novo hearing.
Stewards began their investigations into the ownership transfer amid concerns whether the sale was legitimate after Phoenix Thoroughbreds faced international investigations.
The UK and France banned Phoenix Thoroughbreds from racing in the UK and France in 2021 after authorities questioned whether horses had been purchased with laundered money linked to the OneCoin cryptocurrency scandal.
