Over the months, suspicions have accumulated and the case is now gaining international scope. Mario Brero, the boss of a Swiss investigation firm called ALP Services, accused of having spied on various European personalities on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is the target of at least three investigations, in France and Switzerland, AFP learned this Monday from sources close to the matter.
In 2023, Mediapart published a series of articles with the European consortium European Investigative Collaborations (EIC). On the menu, according to the investigation site, transmission of information to an Emirati intelligence agent, dissemination of information to harm adversaries of the Emirates, or even publication of false articles attacking Qatar and movements linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Mediapart, the private Swiss agency would have notably 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, including more than 200 people and 120 organizations in France, describing them, often wrongly, as Islamists close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to the Swiss online media Heidi News, also part of the EIC, the company of the 77-year-old Genevan, sometimes nicknamed the “king of detectives”, would have earned nearly six million euros between 2017 and 2021 for these “ clandestine operations” carried out in Europe. He also claims that the firm had a network of paid journalists.
Names of French people “transmitted to the Emirati authorities”
In France, the communicated list would have notably contained, according to Mediapart, the former socialist presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, the deputy mayor of Marseille and former senator Samia Ghali, the La France insoumise party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Center National Institute for Scientific Research (CNRS) or the author and anti-racist activist Rokhaya Diallo.
The latter filed a complaint in August, and according to two sources close to the case to AFP on Monday, the Paris prosecutor's office entrusted a preliminary investigation to the Brigade for the Repression of Personal Delinquency (BRDP) a few months ago. . “Justice must investigate such methods. In addition to involving illegal use of personal data, they unfairly associate Rokhaya Diallo with a group (Muslim Brotherhood) with which she has absolutely no connection", causing "reputational damage" and "harassment", worries her lawyer, Me Vincent Brengarth.
Another complaint was filed in mid-January in Paris, by the investigative site Mediapart and by one of its journalists, the media announced to AFP. According to a source close to the matter, the BRDP is also seized of this complaint aimed, according to the new president of Mediapart Carine Fouteau, at "denouncing the listing that we consider illicit (...) of one of our journalists, wrongly assimilated to a communicator of the Muslim Brotherhood and, in doing so, handed over to the Emirati secret services.”
“This listing unduly harms her security and reputation, as well as those of the newspaper,” according to her. “Mediapart has, as part of its complaint, provided the Paris prosecutor's office with an internal ALP Services document which lists the French people whose names were transmitted to the UAE authorities,” Carine Fouteau also specified.
“Practices of incredible violence and seriousness”
In Créteil, after another complaint filed by Sihem Souid, one of Qatar's main lobbyists in France, another preliminary investigation was opened at the end of October 2023, the Créteil prosecutor's office told AFP. His lawyer, Me Céline Astolfe, denounced “practices of incredible violence and seriousness” and requested the appointment of an investigating judge.
“I was horrified to learn that the UAE had overseen a destabilization operation, using an intelligence and espionage company to attack Qatar through me,” Sihem Souid told the AFP, denouncing a “tracking of (his) private life”.
In Switzerland, finally, another source close to the matter told AFP that the public prosecutor of the Confederation had been investigating Mario Brero, a relative and ALP Services, since December, after reports from several administrations and complaints from the Islamologist Tariq Ramadan and the Belgian environmentalist Minister of Climate and Environment, Zakia Khattabi.
Asked by AFP, the latter's office indicated that the minister denies any link with the Muslim Brotherhood, denouncing “fanciful and false allegations”. According to Heidi News, a total of three complaints have been filed in the country.
And the procedures do not stop there, according to the site, which also reveals complaints filed in the United States. A political science researcher, Farid Hafez, filed a complaint in Washington targeting ALP Services in particular, for a defamation campaign he allegedly suffered, as well as Hazim Nada, an American of Egyptian origin living in Switzerland, who claims to have been the target of a destabilization operation carried out by the cabinet.
Asked by AFP, Mario Brero's lawyer did not react immediately, nor did the Emirati authorities. The head of the Swiss firm had already been convicted in 2014 in France for illegally collecting information on the husband of the former boss of the French nuclear group Areva, Anne Lauvergeon.