Mario Brero, the boss of a Swiss investigation firm called ALP Services, is accused of having spied on various European personalities on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. He is the target of at least three investigations, in France and Switzerland, AFP learned this Monday from sources close to the matter.
According to Mediapart, the private Swiss agency would have sent between 2017 and 2020 to the Abu Dhabi intelligence services the names of a thousand Europeans and more than 400 organizations supposedly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in 18 European countries. In France, the communicated list would have notably contained the former socialist presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, the deputy mayor of Marseille and former senator Samia Ghali. The Paris prosecutor's office entrusted a preliminary investigation to the Brigade for the Repression of Personal Delinquency (BRDP) a few months ago. In Créteil, one of Qatar's main lobbyists in France, another preliminary investigation was opened at the end of October. His lawyer, Me Colfe Astéline, denounced “practices of incredible violence and seriousness” and requested the appointment of an investigating judge.