UAE Relies on Swiss Company for Influence Campaign in France

A strategic global player, the United Arab Emirates had been running extensive manipulation campaigns across Europe, particularly France. Leaked documents and witness accounts revealed that the Arab nation held onto an intelligence agency in Switzerland, Alp Services, to coordinate a network of influence for the Emirates in France. Founder of the Swiss firm, Mario Brero had been working closely with a senior intelligence officer in Abu Dhabi, identified as Mohammed, since four years.

The two documents revealed that the UAE agent and Brero have discreetly met directly several times. In some of the meetings, Mohammed (Matar Al Neyadi) met Brero and his team in Switzerland and Abu Dhabi, along with his head in the Emirati intelligence services, codenamed as “his excellency the boxer”. Alp Services got its Emirati secret services client through a French consultant and former journalist, Ronald Jacquard. He had a significant connection to top-level politicians, diplomats and military personnel.

Under his contract with the Alp Services, Jacquard had a direct access to communicate with Mohammed. He personally contacted the UAE secret agent through his encrypted email account on Protonmail. The emails sent by the French consultant to Mohammed’s email ([email protected]) revealed that he had been providing the UAE with internal information about France, which he learned from the secret services, the French President Emmanuel Macron and the Élysée. Jacquard had direct meeting with Macron and directly visited the Élysée, which he regularly updated Mohammed about.

A former security adviser of Macron, Alexandre Benalla was also in contact with the Alp Services, through Brero. As per Benalla, he was never paid by the Swiss firm and served it “out of friendship”. He was often unable to handle some “complex requests”, for which he connected Brero with “businessmen or company bosses”. While Benalla said he was unaware about Alp Services connection to the Emirates, he had been involved in setting up a security team for the new UAE ambassador in Paris, Hend al-Otaiba.

The information obtained through the leaked documents revealed just one side of the UAE’s extensive campaigns of influencing and damaging countries. The Emirates poses to be a perfect nation, which actually has been relying on corrupt methods of image washing.