Influence Campaign: How the UAE Carried Out Special Intelligence Operations in France and Europe
In a new scandal added to the series of Abu Dhabi scandals, the French Mediapart website published on March 1, 2023, a report in which it revealed that the UAE had established a network of influence in France and Europe working on its behalf in a misleading campaign against its opponents, most notably Qatar.
The investigation relied on leaked data and testimonies, as well as meetings with an Emirati intelligence agent, Swiss investigators, researchers, famous French journalists, and Alexandre Benalla, former aide to French President Emmanuel Macron.
According to Mediapart, the UAE has used its network of influence in France to influence discussions of the law to combat radicalism, which serves its interest against currents of political Islam, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, and to collect information and reports on the financial assets of French politicians.
According to the investigation, the Emirati network was behind the publication of the English and Arabic version of the book Qatar Papers, which falsely accused Qatar of financing Islamic associations in Europe, and which was issued at a time of the worst conflict in the Persian Gulf (the Qatar-Gulf crisis).
The book was published by journalists Christian Chesnot, who works for Radio France, and Georges Malbrunot, who works with Le Figaro.
Abu Dhabi’s Spies
The French Mediapart website revealed, in a lengthy investigation, the complex network of Emirati influence in Europe, especially France, indicating its relationship to misleading information published on the Internet and even hacking.
It pointed out that what the investigation revealed falls within the context of the shadow war between the two Gulf neighbors, which reached its climax between 2017 and 2021, when a coalition led by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed an illegal air, sea, and land blockade on Qatar, accusing it of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the context of the conflict between senior Qatar and the UAE in France, through Doha’s acquisition of the Paris Saint-Germain football club and Abu Dhabi’s investment in the cultural field through the Louvre Museum it hosts, the UAE established Operation Raven to penetrate the Qataris with the help of former US hackers, according to the investigation.
The investigation showed how Abu Dhabi’s spies in Europe, as it described them, relied on a Swiss-based economic intelligence firm, Alp Services, which was founded in 1989 by Mario Brero, known for his controversial intelligence methods.
Brero, 76, was sentenced in France for illegally obtaining in 2011 the phone records of the husband of Anne Lauvergeon, the then head of the French nuclear group Areva, who described him as a spy.
Alp Services had suspicious roles in carrying out special intelligence operations on behalf of its clients, including a senior intelligence officer in Abu Dhabi who had used Brero’s services for at least four years.
The Swiss company, under false identities, published misleading information on the Internet with the aim of harming people and entities that the UAE considers its opponents, and some of this information relates to the Qatar Gate case.
Mediapart also reported, quoting a leaked text message, that in November 2018, Brero had a face-to-face dinner with the Emirati secret agent (Mohammed), who assigned the head of Alp three important tasks for a total of €1 million; then another contract was signed after that, for a fee of €1.2 million every six months.
The Alp mission was so sensitive that communications passed exclusively through two anonymous six-digit addresses opened on the encrypted email service Proton Mail; one for Alp, the other for the UAE agent. Secret meetings also took place between the parties in Switzerland and Abu Dhabi.
Emirati Operations
The investigation also revealed that one of the Emirati operations was to provide for Alp to conduct in-depth investigations into Qatari influence networks, lobbyists, influencers, and journalists in the European Union.
Meanwhile, Avisa Partners and lobbyist Sihem Souid provided Mediapart with documents and photos pointing to the Emirati secret agent.
Sihem Souid is a former policewoman and socialist ministerial advisor who later became a member of a Qatari lobby group in France and was also the target of the Emirati network of influence. As Alp Services suggested, its Emirati client looked her up to find negative information about her and her husband.
Alp Services also planned to investigate Avisa Partners, an EU-wide public affairs marketing and advisory agency working for Qatar.
In the same context, and based on documents seen by the French website, Alp Services aims to publish or influence 100 articles annually on behalf of the UAE, and some of them have already been published through fake accounts, most notably Club de Mediapart under the pseudonym Tanya Klein.
In the period between 2018 and 2021, Klein published fifteen posts attacking the Muslim Brotherhood movement and Qatar.
According to the investigation, one of the articles published by Alp on the Belgian website Histoiresroyales.fr included accusations of murder and torture against a member of the Qatari royal family.
However, Nicolas Fontaine, editor of Histoiresroyales.fr, denied carrying out such publication, claiming that the article against the brother of the Emir of Qatar was based on three sources.
Among the other tasks of Alp Services in 2020 is to conduct extensive investigations about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, especially in France, Belgium, and Norway.
Based on it, the Swiss agents prepared reports on personalities and organizations affiliated with or close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
As well as they designed large graphs by country, bringing together dozens of names that are considered public figures affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
In the same context, the French website touched on the recent scandal that rocked the European Parliament, which affected Qatar.
As the European Parliament had announced on December 12, 2022, the opening of an internal investigation into the circumstances of a corruption case linked to Qatar and a number of European deputies accused of influencing European countries in favor of Qatar obtaining the right to host the 2022 World Cup.
This sparked a storm of controversy at the level of the old continent about the extent of penetration into the circle of European policy legislators and the amount of corruption within it.
Doha denied all the charges against it, but the Belgian judiciary continues to research and investigate the case, which many sources have confirmed will reveal the intersection of many parties and destinations in its stages.
Influence Network
In carrying out its mission, Alp Services has enlisted the services of several researchers, such as Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, an Italian academic, director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, and an expert on political Islam.
This was evident in the signing in January 2018 of Vidino, who has many publications on the Muslim Brotherhood movement, a consulting contract with the Swiss company worth thousands of euros.
At the heart of the relationship between Alp Services and the Emirati secret services, looming on the horizon is the name of the French security expert Roland Jacquard, who is known to TV channels as an expert on Islamic extremism after heading the International Observatory on Terrorism, which boasted to the UAE of having reached President Macron.
Jacquard also has an important network of relations in the political, military, and diplomatic circles. According to information, Jacquard is behind the Emirati client’s access to Alp Services, in addition to other clients.
In an email dated September 10, 2020, Roland Jacquard confirmed to his Emirati interlocutor that he had held a special meeting the previous week with President Macron’s advisors in order to prepare with them a law against radical Islam, which is aimed at combating separatism that will be voted on next year.
The Mediapart investigation added that the former guard of French President Emmanuel Macron, Alexandre Benalla, appeared on the list of Alp services, pointing out that he has participated in many events organized by Brero’s Network since 2018; that is, after Benalla was dismissed from the Elysee, including securing the transfers of the new Emirati ambassador to Paris in the summer of 2021.
Suspicious Relationships
Another prominent name raised in the investigation was French-Algerian journalist Atmane Tazaghart, who is also a former editor-in-chief of the Arabic-language newsroom of France 24 TV.
According to Mediapart, Tazaghart was fired in 2016 due to problematic comments he made on a pro-Iranian Lebanese TV station.
Tazaghart then wrote critical articles about Qatar under the supervision of Abdel Rehim Ali, a person with close ties to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and a member of the Egyptian Parliament.
According to the investigation, Tazaghart sent an email to the Emirati secret agent that he had succeeded in gathering information on former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his alleged financial links to Qatar.
The report added: “When Mediapart contacted Tazaghart, he said that he did not know the Emirati agent, and considered the email he sent only a brief note requested by the UAE research center, TRENDS Research and Advisory.”
The investigation also indicated that there is a suspicious link of Tazaghart with Chesnot and Malbrunot, who published a book accusing Qatar and its charitable organizations of financing projects related to terrorism.
The report said: “Shortly after the publication of the book, Atmane Tazaghart contacted the French publisher Michel Lafon and concluded a contract with it, specifically in June 2019, to purchase the book’s rights and publish translations in Arabic and English.”
On the other hand, Tazaghart denied financing the publication and translation of the book, claiming that he signed the contract with Michel Lafon on the basis of an official power of attorney on behalf of the British Countries Reports Publishing (CRP).
The mysterious CRP also funded the professional activities of Tazaghart in July 2019, launching a website called Global Watch Analysis, which publishes a magazine called Screensaver. Its publications are dedicated to geostrategic monitoring, security control, and the fight against terrorism, extremism, and intolerance in all its forms, and a large part of its articles is devoted to criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood.
Global Watch Analysis, in agreement with the CRP, promoted the release of the English version of the Qatar Papers book during a press conference held in January 2020 at a Parisian hotel in the Champs-Elysées district, in the presence of Tazaghart and the authors of the book, Chesnot and Malbrunot.
Global Watch Analysis also published the French version of a recent work on the Muslim Brotherhood by academic Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, which was funded by the private intelligence agency Alp Services.
In April 2022, Global Watch Analysis published the book The Global Threat of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a translation of a report from the US Congress on the subject, accompanied by analyzes by many experts, including Roland Jacquard, who is associated with Alp Services, and journalist Atmane Tazaghart.
It is noteworthy that last year, an investigation by Orient XXI found that the UAE was discreetly pressuring a major partner in France in an attempt to present Qatar in a negative light.
The investigation also outlined the UAE’s efforts to promote Qatar’s alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood, regularly accusing it of funding the group as well as linking the movement to terrorism as part of its perception war.
Dr. Samir Falah, head of the Council of European Muslims, confirmed in a statement to Al-Estiklal that “the UAE is trying to influence Western policy-making, especially towards Islamic countries, in order to impose its suspicious story about Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
“The UAE has resorted to using conspiracy theories about the Islamization of the West to promote its narratives,” he added.
“Most Western countries ignore the activities of the UAE and its influence operations in the capitals of those countries as general diplomatic activities of a partner in the Gulf,” he said.
“Abu Dhabi had also embraced information networks consisting of nationalists, Islamophobes, and orientalists in the media, academia, and policy-making,” Dr. Falah noted.
