Why Does Abu Dhabi Support the Anti-Islam Extreme Right in France?

With the far-right leader Marine Le Pen reaching the second round of the French presidential elections that would be held on April 24, 2022, to compete with the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, attention re-emerged about her relationship with the UAE, and the support she received from it in the past.

Emmanuel Macron topped the results of the first round of the French presidential elections that took place on April 10, with 27.06 percent of the vote, ahead of Marine Le Pen 23.04 percent, who will face him in the second round.

 

Save Le Pen

Numerous reports revealed during the previous years the extent of support received by the extreme right from the United Arab Emirates throughout Europe, especially in France represented by the Right National Rally Party led by presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

On January 13, 2021, the French Mediapart website revealed an investigation showing that Le Pen's party received 8 million euros as Emirati support in 2017.

In an investigation, the website said that the loan granted by the UAE to the National Rally Party (formerly the National Front) "saved it after the 2017 elections, when it was going through great financial difficulties."

It explained that part of the investigation looks at the "commission paid" on the sidelines of the party obtaining this loan, noting that the third party in the contract was the former member of the European Parliament, French businessman Laurent Faucher.

Faucher has a group of business interests in Africa and is close to Claude Gueant, the former right-hand man of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

According to Mediapart the UAE financing contract was signed in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, in June 2017, while Faucher was representing an Emirati bank.

The French website revealed for the first time the issue of Emirati funding to Marine Le Pen's party, in October 2019.

According to the French Mediapart website, it was proven that the amount was transferred by the Emirati finance company Noor Capital under the supervision of one of its officials.

Noor Capital defines itself on its website as a "private joint stock company working in the field of financial investments, licensed by the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates."

With the previous funding obtained by Le Pen from the Emirati side in her competition against Macron during the French presidential elections in 2017, observers do not rule out the continuation of Emirati funding to the leader of the far-right party in the current elections, since the relationship is not new between the two parties.

 

Previous Relationship

In July 2017, a book titled Marine Knows Everything revealed that the UAE had provided funding to Le Pen, who lost the 2017 presidential election.

Under the deal between Abu Dhabi and Le Pen, the latter got money in return for launching a campaign against Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The book reads: "The treasury is one of the problems that the far-right National Front faced in financing the election campaign of its leader, Marine Le Pen."

The book continued, "It is no secret that it resorted to French banks and refused to finance them...The problem of financial resources made Le Pen's party look for the support of Russian banks, but it seems that these institutions have become scarce, so Marine Le Pen's team had to search for an alternative, and this alternative was Abu Dhabi."

To shed light on the contents of the book Marine Knows Everything, Al-Jazeera met in 2017 with Marine Turque, a journalist interested in monitoring the activity of the extreme right in France since 2008, and who partnered with Matthias Destel, a specialist in investigative journalism, in preparing the book.

"In July 2014, Marine Le Pen received an official in the Emirati intelligence at the family home, and the topic that was raised was combating Islamic extremism, and launching a campaign against Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood," Turque said.

She added, "What happened shows a geopolitical interest in the UAE, which is that if Le Pen came to power, it would ally with Abu Dhabi to fight Qatar."

In response to a question about what the Emirati side said to Le Pen, Turque replied: "A person who was present at that meeting said: We can help you...and of course we imagine that the UAE has nothing to offer other than financial assistance."

The book also revealed that a year after this meeting, Le Pen, who is known for her hostility to Islam and Muslims, traveled to Cairo and held meetings with Egyptian officials, including the head of the regime, Abdel Fattah Sisi.

Mottori commented on this, saying: "Le Pen went to Egypt with a lot of assistance from the Emirates, and we reveal in the book that her travel was financed by an Emirati agency for communication."

He added, "All of her meetings took place with the help of the UAE, according to our information. We know that Cairo cannot refuse a request from Abu Dhabi, as it is its ally and the main foreign investor."

Florian Philippot, deputy head of Le Pen’s party and the second man in it, went out to comment on what was mentioned in the book, declaring to a French channel: "The funding of the UAE and Le Pen's travel to Egypt is not a problem."

 

Decades-old Alliance

In January 2021, documents of the US Department of Justice under the FARA Act confirmed that the UAE had established a decades-old alliance with the American extreme right.

The documents show the UAE's alliance with the hard-line and anti-Islam American right and with pro-Israel groups.

According to the documents, since 2011 the “advertised” Emirati lobby payments in Washington amounted to $132,716,000, paid by Abu Dhabi in exchange for political pressure services or public relations campaigns to achieve its interests in Washington.

There was no real Emirati lobby before the appointment of Yousef Al-Otaiba as the UAE ambassador to the United States (brother of the current Abu Dhabi ambassador to Paris, Hind Al-Otaiba).

The appointment came in July 2008, and before that, most of the Emirates contracts in America were through the Emirate of Dubai and its financial and tourism institutions, either to accomplish investment deals or for promotional services for tourism in Dubai.

Al-Otaiba has employed many major companies in the field of lobbying since his arrival, some of which are still working for Abu Dhabi, according to the documents.

On December 19, 2020, the EuroScope said that the UAE's funding of pressure groups in Europe to influence policies and whitewash Abu Dhabi's reputation is constantly increasing.

The report of the EuroScope, an institution concerned with monitoring the interactions of Middle Eastern issues, revealed that the UAE is one of the largest countries in spending on lobbying in order to gain influence.

The report removed the cover from experts funded by Abu Dhabi for this purpose, including European prime ministers, a former Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO, and specialized consulting firms.

He pointed out that the pressure groups' efforts aims to promote the authoritarian stability in the UAE, its role in the wars in Yemen and Libya, and its support for the "brutal" regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, which has won the approval of conservatives, the extreme right, and Islamophobes in Europe.

The EuroScope report mentioned the names of pressure groups serving the UAE's goals in Europe, such as the Busola research foundation, and the controversial SCL Social of Cambridge Analytica Foundation, with the aim of attacking the State of Qatar on social and traditional media.

Leaked messages from the mail of the Emirati ambassador in Washington, Yousef Al-Otaiba, previously revealed Abu Dhabi's dependence on bribery of various kinds to influence the decision-making in the West, especially in the United States.