Qatar paid more than $10 million to a company made up of former CIA agents in order to draw criticism from the president of the German soccer federation against the wealthy Arab nation for hosting the 2022 World Cup, according to reports. findings of an investigation by The Associated Press.
The multi-year undercover operation, codenamed “Project Riverbed,” targeted Theo Zwanziger, a former FIFA executive committee member and president of the German federation who was one of the sharpest critics of the decision to award the World Cup to Qatar, according to an analysis of internal company documents reviewed by the AP.
“It’s a very, very strange feeling when you’re involved in the sport and committed to the values of the sport, to be followed and influenced,” Zwanziger told the AP in an interview last week.
The World Cup in Qatar, which will start in November, has been tainted by allegations of corruption and mismanagement. US prosecutors alleged that members of FIFA’s executive committee received bribes in exchange for their votes. Qatar denies any wrongdoing.
Documents reviewed by the AP provide new details about Qatar’s efforts to obtain and retain the tournament’s venue, specifically the country’s work with former CIA agent Kevin Chalker and his company, Global Risk Advisors. Documents abound in previous AP reporting on Chalker’s work for Qatar.
Qatari officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Chalker acknowledged in a statement that GRA worked on a Riverbed Project, but maintained that it was just “a media monitoring project assigned to interns and overseen by a full-time employee, who was responsible for reading and summarizing news articles.”
“AP reporting for this article is based on false information provided by unidentified sources,” Chalker’s statement added.
Chalker spokesman David Wells said he was not authorized to say who the Riverbed Project client was or provide other details, such as how long it was listed or the names of the employees who worked on it. Chalker’s attorney, Brian Ascher, said Zwanziger was never the target of a covert influence campaign by the GRA.
The documents analyzed by AP indicate otherwise.
“The main objective of the Riverbed Project was to neutralize the effectiveness of Theo Zwanziger’s criticism of the Qatar 2022 World Cup and his attempts to get FIFA to take the World Cup from Qatar,” read one of the GRA documents reviewed by AP.
The AP reviewed hundreds of pages of documents from Chalker’s companies, including a final report, memos and budgets. Various sources who had authorized access to provide the documents to AP. The sources raised concerns about Chalker’s work for Qatar and asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
The AP took several steps to verify the authenticity of the documents. This failed to confirm the details of several documents with various sources, including former associates of Chalker, and a review of the electronic documents’ metadata or digital history — where possible — to confirm who produced the documents and when.
Elliott Broidy, who once served as a fundraiser for former US President Donald Trump, sued Chalker, accusing him of mounting a campaign of hacking and espionage by Qatar. Broidy alleges in court documents that Chalker and the GRA targeted Zwanziger with a covert influence campaign like the one he describes in documents reviewed by AP. Chalker’s lawyers argue the lawsuit is without merit, and a judge dismissed Broidy’s main suit, though he left the door open for the case to continue.
Project Riverbed operated from January 2012 to mid-2014 and “successfully employed sophisticated traditional intelligence methods to track individuals within Zwanziger’s circle of influence and shift opinion about the World Cup in Qatar, according to a document reviewed by AP and which synthesized Riverbed’s work.
What was sought was to create a “network of ‘influencers'”, made up of people close to the German leader, and who would be in charge of transmitting points of favors to Qatar as the venue for the World Cup. To that end, GRA sent out a “source” who struck up a conversation with influencers in a way they didn’t suspect was an organized messaging campaign, according to internal documents.
“The interactions always conveyed a consistent message: the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was good for business, it brought the Middle East closer to the West, and it was good for the world,” the report says. GRA said in a report that “miles” were achieved from those interactions with the Zwanziger network.
GRA documents indicate that the Riverbed Project received an initial budget of $27 million and that Qatar was late on payments and did not provide all the funds.
Despite funding difficulties, GRA said Riverbed was a success.
“Zwanziger now believes that Qatar should retain the 2022 World Cup so that the international community becomes more aware of the conditions of migrant workers in Qatar and pushes for comprehensive Qatari human and worker rights reform,” GRA said in a statement. your summary
The company was wrong.
In a radio interview with a German broadcaster in June 2015 — a year after the supposed end of the Riverbed Project — Zwanziger reiterated that Qatar was “a cancer for world football.”
This prompted the Qatar Football Federation to file a civil suit against Zwanziger in order to stop making such comments in the future. The case was dismissed by a Düsseldorf regional court, which ruled that Zwanziger was exercising his right to freedom of expression.
Zwanziger faced further legal difficulties later when he and members of the organizing committee for the 2006 World Cup in Germany faced corruption investigations in Frankfurt and Switzerland. Zwanziger denied wrongdoing and in August 2019 he accused Swiss prosecutors of misreading the evidence. The trial in Switzerland ended in April 2020 without a sentence being issued.
Zwanziger said he feels vindicated knowing now that he was the target of a failed campaign of manipulation.