Claims that the United Arab Emirates has sought to meddle in French affairs are now being examined by prosecution authorities in Paris. According to information received by Mediapart and Le Monde, Sihem Souid, who is a lobbyist for the UAE's regional rival Qatar, has deposed an official complaint with prosecutors in the French capital. The former French police officer claims she is the victim of a campaign to spy on her and to disrupt her life and has filed complaints alleging “breach of privacy”, “trespass”, “interfering with confidential correspondence” and “theft”.
Though formally filed against “persons unknown”, the complaint explicitly targets the Emirates government and the Swiss agency Alp Services which is said to have worked on its behalf. It is based on investigations published by Mediapart in early March and by The New Yorker magazine three weeks later.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Back then Mediapart revealed that Alp Services, run by a veteran of the Swiss intelligence sector Mario Brero, had put in place a vast operation to gather intelligence and win influence across Europe, on behalf of the secret services in Abu Dhabi. The aim was to harm regional rival Qatar and movements close to the Muslim Brotherhood, seen as an enemy by the UAE.
According to documents seen by Mediapart, one of the contracts entailed Alp carrying out detailed investigations into Qatar's “lobbyists, influencers and journalists” in the European Union, including Sihem Souid.
This former police officer and one-time socialist ministerial advisor has been handling public relations and lobbying for Qatar in France and Belgium since 2015 via her company Edile Consulting. In a commercial proposal to its Emirates client, Alp Services offered to investigate Sihem Souid and her “husband and their company” in order to find “negative information”.
Photos of the apartment
Meanwhile The New Yorker reported that Alp Services had taken photographs of the flat where Sihem Souid lived at the time with her husband and their two children. The Qatar lobbyist has included these photos in her official complaint, as they were sent to her by a journalist at the magazine before publication in order to check their authenticity.
The images are marked “reco” meaning “reconnaissance” and were apparently taken in 2017. They show the apartment block where Sihem Souid lived, the front of the building with her balcony indicated on the photo by a red line, and the flat's front door. According to The New Yorker another photograph, which shows two letters, is marked: “Photo taken inside her letterbox by our agent.”
Enlargement : Illustration 2
“One of the images, which I did not include in my complaint in order to protect my privacy, is a photo of my son inside the apartment,” Sihem Souid told Mediapart. “I don't know at this stage if it was taken through the window or if some individuals entered my home to take it.”
The lobbyist now wonders if there is a potential link between these photos and other events she says she was a victim of at the end of 2017 and during 2018, just after the agency Alp Services was hired by the UAE. “On several occasions I spotted suspicious cars watching or tailing me. I had my handbag with all my notes in it stolen in front of the National Assembly during a meeting with a Member of Parliament,” she says.
The former police officer also says her home was burgled in 2018. “I had jewellery stolen but also an old mobile phone, my computer and notebooks. I moved from that apartment in 2019 because of that burglary.”
Sihem Souid condemns what she describes as a “frightening storyline” from a “third-rate crime novel”. She says: “My physical safety and that of my family have been put directly in danger. An investigation absolutely has to be carried out into these events, which are inconceivable in a state under the rule of law. Whatever enmity the United Arab Emirates may have for Qatar in no way justifies me being exploited, targeted and disrupted in order to weaken my client.”
Data leaks
When approached by Mediapart, Alp Services and its boss Mario Brero declined to comment. The private Swiss intelligence agency's lawyer Christian Lüscher asked Mediapart to “desist from any publication” on the basis that our information was based on “stolen” data. He said Alp Services was preparing to take legal action against Mediapart.
Beyond the Sihem Souid case itself, the investigation published by The New Yorker confirms and supplements Mediapart's own reporting. The American magazine says its report was based on a data leak from Alp Services obtained by a group of hackers. This group offered these documents to one of the alleged victims of the company's operations, Hazim Nada, who founded and ran an oil trading company based in Switzerland, Lord Energy.
According to The New Yorker, as part of its work for the UAE Alp Services ran a smear campaign against Hazim Nada and his company, based in particular on the fact that he is the son of the Egyptian Youssef Nada, who was a banker and prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hazim Nada, who himself denies any financial links with the Brotherhood, subsequently suffered a catastrophic reversal in his business fortunes: his bank closed his accounts and stopped funding Lord Energy, which in the end ceased trading in 2019. Hazim Nada told The New Yorker that the operation against him had “ruined” his life and that he had enlisted two law firms, in Geneva and London, to study the next legal steps to be taken in the case.
Worrying ties with the magazine 'Valeurs Actuelles'
The New Yorker also confirmed that Alp Services used a fictitious blogger, 'Tanya Klein', to publish propaganda articles against Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood on Mediapart Club, this site's participative section (see black box below).
According to the American magazine the Swiss agency also had worrying ties with Swiss and French journalists. The New Yorker says it has possession of an internal Alp Services document showing a payment of 5,000 euros to Louis de Raguenel, who was at the time a journalist at the far-right weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles and who today runs the political service at Europe 1 radio. Louis de Raguenel denied to the American magazine that he had received any money from Alp Services. When approached by Mediapart he did not respond.
During our own investigation we revealed that another journalist from Valeurs Actuelles, Nicolas Clément, had published an article on the weekly magazine's website that was hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood and which twice cited a blog by fake blogger 'Tanya Klein'. In a later email to its client the UAE, Alp Services boasted that it had been behind this article in Valeurs Actuelles.
Contacted by Mediapart at the time, the deputy managing editor at Valeurs Actuelles, Tugdual Denis, had denied this, and insisted that its journalist had come across the 'Tanya Klein' blog by himself. “I assure you that this is in no way a planted article and that the journalist carried out his investigations with different sources, some of them open [sources],” he said. “And to be clear, we had no contact with Alp Services.”
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
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