“It’s worrying that you’re doing that,” said the 86-year-old on Swiss broadcaster SRF, who reported on Wednesday about a secret project controlled from Qatar. The emirate is accused of having orchestrated espionage campaigns against FIFA officials via a US company.
Qatar is said to have commissioned the company of a former CIA agent to spy on officials in the course of the final round allocation in December 2010 and afterwards. Hundreds of millions of euros have been spent on it. Hackers should steal sensitive information from computers. “The desert state wanted him to avoid any change of position within FIFA, no new friendships, no potentially dangerous alliance – simply nothing that could endanger the World Cup,” wrote SRF. There was initially no comment from Qatar.
Qatar critics as a target
According to the report, crimes were allegedly committed in Switzerland on behalf of Qatar. The first target is said to have been the former Blatter consultant Peter Hargitay in January 2012, so the tracks lead to an IT company in India. That would show the files of the Zurich criminal proceedings, which are available to the SRF. The tracks then lead further to the spy company Global Risk Advisors in the USA, led by ex-CIA spy Kevin Chalker. According to SRF, his lawyer rejects the allegations. According to the AP news agency, the FBI is also investigating Chalker.
The actual target of the action against Hargitay is said to have been the Australian head of the association, Frank Lowy, who was considered a critic of Qatar. Lowy was to be framed by an FBI report. According to the report, the former President of the German Football Association, Theo Zwanziger, who was a member of the FIFA Executive Committee from 2011 to 2015, was also affected. Zwanziger should therefore be influenced because of his critical attitude towards World Cup hosts Qatar.
“Feels like brainwashing”
“It feels like brainwashing that you want to do with these means,” Zwanziger told SRF. The German sees FIFA as having a duty. “It’s such a scandal. Those responsible should pick it up. FIFA President Infantino is the first to do it. But of course he doesn’t do it because he’s a Qatari vassal.”
The SRF quoted from an internal document that Global Risk Advisors Qatar had submitted. This proposes a budget of between 387 million and 567 million dollars for the project. 66 people should therefore work for Qatar for nine years.
On request, the Swiss public prosecutor’s office rejected the allegations that they had acted too passively in this case. It went on to say: “In the event that in the context of the proceedings before the public prosecutor’s office new evidence or facts become known which speak for a person’s criminal liability and do not result from previous files, the public prosecutor’s office can, based on the Code of Criminal Procedure, order the retrial of a legally ended procedure.”
Source: Nachrichten
