Do we like them?Do we like Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum?
Our score: 0 out of 10. A UK High Court found he ordered the abduction of two adult relatives and a campaign of intimidation against his ex-wife, which he denies.
Sheikh Mohammed took over as Ruler of Dubai on 4 January 2006 after his brother died, and he also serves as Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE. In January 2026 the UAE President publicly hailed his 20 years in the job. Dubai's skyline and business empire are tied to his name, and that is the story he and his government like to tell.
The story the English courts told is darker. In March 2020 the High Court's Justice Andrew McFarlane found that he “ordered and orchestrated” the 2000 abduction of his adult daughter Shamsa from Cambridge, and that another daughter, Latifa, was seized and returned to Dubai in 2002 and again in 2018. The judge also found his divorce from Princess Haya was timed to “maximise insult and upset her”. Sheikh Mohammed denied the allegations and said the case involved “highly personal and private matters”.
It didn't stop there. In October 2021 the High Court found he gave authority for Haya's phone to be hacked with Pegasus spyware during the litigation; he rejected that finding as unfair. In December 2021 a judge ordered him to pay more than £554 million in a settlement covering Haya's claims and the family's security and upkeep, and called her evidence “palpably honest”.
On the harm test, the court findings are the heart of it: a UK High Court found he ordered abductions and a campaign of intimidation against women in his own family. On LGBTQ+ people, the UAE he helps run criminalises same-sex conduct, but we found no words of his own on the subject, so we say what the law is and nothing about what he thinks. On migrants and the planet, we couldn't open a dated source of his own words or acts, so that part of the record is thin.
The good stuff is real money. The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, his philanthropic arm, reported spending about Dh2.3 billion in 2025 and reaching 165 million people in 122 countries. It's state-linked giving on a huge scale, and it counts, but it doesn't cancel what the courts found.
Recent news has been ceremonial rather than scandalous, and that's the whole list. Gossip aggregators ran rumours about him in 2026, but that is tabloid territory and not something an established outlet confirmed, so we've left it out. The anniversary coverage is the official, flattering version of the man.