Omar Mir, the businessman seeking a 90% economic stake in AFC Wimbledon, serves as a UK director for G42, an AI firm built by Abu Dhabi’s security apparatus. Among his co-directors is Marty Edelman, a Manchester City board member since 2008. Beyond these connections, Mir, poised to take control of England’s most fan-owned club, remains shrouded in mystery.
By Martin Calladine. Additional reporting by Philippe Auclair.
AFC Wimbledon, the phoenix club created in 2002 following Wimbledon FC’s controversial move to Milton Keynes, has long been a beacon of hope in English football. Without a club, a name, a stadium or players, fans rebuilt their club from scratch, ultimately culminating in a return to league football and the construction of a new stadium only metres from the old one.
Yet, the EFL’s financial demands have proven the toughest challenge. The team’s finances are in a dire situation. According to the board, AFC Wimbledon carries £7.5 million in debts and is losing £2.4 million a year. Without investment, officials warn that the club has only four to six months until its “professional viability is at risk.”
Through SSC, Mir has proposed to invest up to £87 million into Wimbledon over five years. The supporters would retain 50.01% ownership of the club, but Mir would take over day-to-day operations, delegating those tasks to Ryan Bertrand, the former Chelsea player-turned-agent. Under the plans, Mir’s share of the club’s economic rights – the entitlement to profits and increased club value – would rise from 34%, on signing the deal, to up to 90% if he meets his funding commitments. The ground is excluded from the deal.
After exploring a partial sale for years, the board is recommending that the club sells up to 90% of its “economic rights” to Sloane Street Capital (SSC), an off-the-shelf limited company founded by a British national, Omar Mir, in June. The club’s 7,500 supporter-owners have until 17th November to vote on the sale.
Wimbledon fans are confronted with fundamental questions: who is Mir? What does he want with Wimbledon? And is he truly the right custodian to hold the keys to a club that supporters rebuilt, brick by brick, less than 25 years ago?
All roads lead to the United Arab Emirates
Mir’s profile, part of the deal pack distributed by the club’s board to fans, is polished.
He describes himself as a tech investor and philanthropist, primarily through his role as “Global Strategic Advisor to the Co-Founder and CEO of Worldwide Technology (WWT),” a privately held US tech firm. He is also an advisor to private equity firm General Atlantic and to The King’s Trust International, a charity created by King Charles III “to tackle the global crisis of youth unemployment”, and to the Commandant of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the British Army’s officer training school, where he claims to be a member of its “Honour Guard.” He serves as a visiting professor at the Imperial College Business School in London and earned a PhD in “Philosophy Business Management.” He recently joined the board of trustees of the American Ballet Theatre, the US’s premier ballet company.
His CV is not quite the full story, however, omitting connections to some of the most influential and controversial figures in football, technology and global security.
In August, strikingly, he became a director of two companies: G42 Commercial Services UK Ltd and Group 42 UK Limited.
Both entities are British-registered, but are ultimately owned, via an Irish company, by G42, an Abu Dhabi technology firm. A world-leading AI company, with connections to Microsoft and Anthropic, the firm, according to a recent report in the Guardian, is the brainchild of Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, deputy ruler of Abu Dhabi and the so-called “Spy Sheikh”. He is the brother of Manchester City’s owner Sheik Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Tahnoon controls a huge part of the Abu Dhabi royal family’s investments as well as its security infrastructure. In 2025, he persuaded US President Donald Trump to lift the US’s ban on the export of advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Shortly after, Tahnoon used a company called StringZ Holding RSC to invest $2bn in World Liberty Financial, Trump’s crypto business.
The Guardian reported that G42 itself grew directly from the Emirate’s security apparatus. Its current CEO, Peng Xiao, previously played a key role in “DarkMatter,” Abu Dhabi’s cyber warfare and spying firm that preceded G42. The company denied this, saying: “G42 was established as an AI and technology company focused on cloud and AI infrastructure.”
The two British-registered subsidiaries of G42 have three directors: Mir, Frederik Thirion and Marty Edelman.Thirion is the CFO of the entire G42 group. Edelman, who alongside Mir is co-chair of G42’s UK and EU operations, is G42’s global General Counsel and a close advisor to Tahnoon. To football fans, he is better known as the lawyer who helped Abu Dhabi acquire Manchester City and who has served on the club’s board since 2008. Like Tahnoon, he commands considerable clout, sitting as an executive board member of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, the body tasked with overseeing reconstruction in Gaza.
Given Edelman’s closeness to senior Abu Dhabi royals and his position on City’s board throughout the period it was found to have deliberately misstated its commercial income by £900 million, Josimar asked Mir about the nature of his relationship with Edelman and if the two had ever discussed football. Mir did not reply.
Mir’s ties to influential figures extend beyond the UAE. In 2025, he joined the board of Apolitical, an AI business for civil servants, which the UK Cabinet Office has endorsed. General Sir Nick Carter, the UK’s Chief of Defence Staff, Britain’s most senior soldier from 2018 to 2021, serves on the board. Between 2024 and May 2026, Carter was also a “Strategic Counsellor” at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
In October 2026, Carter and Mir founded a company together, The National Security Partnership Ltd, though its purpose remains unclear. Mir did not respond to questions about his relationship with Carter.
Baron of Thorntoun
Omar Mir’s digital footprint is quite light. Aside from a mention naming him Dell’s “Salesperson of the Year” in 2017, there is very little public information about what Mir, 44, did before 2020.
He does not have a current active LinkedIn account, but Josimar accessed a copy of his deleted profile on the platform, which shows that he spent ten years (2005-2015) with Bell Microproducts and Avnet, where he was given the position of Director, Service Provider Business and Alliances in 2014. He joined WWT in February 2015, where he fulfilled a variety of roles, rising to Special Advisor for International Affairs to the Executive Board in April 2022.
According to his Imperial College bio, he received a BSc in computing from the University of Salford. However, no PhD is listed on his Imperial profile page. Josimar was not able to find any reference to it in doctoral thesis databases and when asked for clarification, Mr Mir did not respond.
Seeking to verify his Sandhurst credentials and his Honour Guard status, we contacted the Ministry of Defence. Its response was brief: “We won’t be making any comment on this individual.”
Other online profiles present Mir as both a Dr. and the “Baron of Thorntoun,” a Scottish title he acquired in June 2026. This barony is neither a hereditary peerage nor a life peerage awarded for public service – meaning it confers no seat in the UK’s upper legislative chamber, the House of Lords. Instead, it is a title available for purchase, confirming no rights beyond a place on the Scottish Barony Register. Despite holding no political function, such baronies can command prices in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Mir did not reply when Josimar asked how much he had paid for his.
On both the Scottish Barony Register and the Companies House registry for Sloane Street Capital, Mir gives his name as “Omar Michael Thomas Mir.” Elsewhere at Companies House, he is Omar Mir or “Omar Iqtidar Mir”. Under Section 1112 of the Companies Act 2006, it is a criminal offence to file materially false information at Companies House. Josimar asked Mir which of these entries correctly reflects his middle name. Mir did not respond.
He also failed to address inquiries about his wealth’s source or whether he could finance AFC Wimbledon’s £87 million requirement debt-free.
Surrey office
Josimar established that Mir owns a flat in Esher, Surrey, acquired in 2023 for a reported £1.15 million. But when he became a director of G42 Commercial Services Limited in August 2026, Mir listed his correspondence address as a shopfront in Coulsdon, a commuter town at the southern edge of London.
Earlier this week, Josimar visited the office, but encountered a closed building firm with a note in the window to deliver the post to the nextdoor pharmacy. A second door, blocked by boxes, displayed an email address linked to a property management company where Mir was registered at Companies House as a “person with significant control” in 2025. The company has outstanding mortgages against eight properties, six created when Mir apparently owned the company. The extent of his other holdings in the UK is unclear.
Mir appears to have assets in the UAE, though. On five occasions in the last 12 months, he was a winner in the monthly cash prize draw run by Emirates NDB, a Dubai-based bank.
The Millionaire Wall of Fame draw rewards existing customers with entries based on the value of their investments In December 2025, Mir won the top prize of 1m UAE dirham, equivalent to more than £200,000 GBP.
Members of AFC Wimbledon have started voting on the takeover proposal and have until 17 November to decide whether Omar Mir is the man to offer their club a future.
Josimar repeatedly contacted Omar Mir with a series of questions, but did not receive a reply.
