UAE sued for $2.8bn in US over ‘dark’ Islamophobic smear campaign

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is being sued in a $2.8 billion lawsuit in the US over its financing of a smear campaign against Swiss businessman of Egyptian origin, Hazim Nada. Abu Dhabi has been accused of bankrolling a “dark public relations” operation that falsely linked an American oil trader to terrorist financing.

The lawsuit filed yesterday by Nada in the District of Columbia alleges that, starting in 2017, the UAE paid a Geneva-based private intelligence firm, Alp Services, to “seriously damage” his reputation and business in a sweeping smear campaign. Nada is seeking damages worth $2.77 billion over the campaign that tipped his commodities trading firm, Lord Energy, into bankruptcy, his lawyers said.

Details of the UAE smear campaign was uncovered by the New Yorker Magazine last year. Titled “The dirty secrets of a smear campaign”, investigative journalist, David D Kirkpatrick, exposed the desperate and often criminal lengths to which the UAE, an absolutist tribal Gulf monarchy, has gone to crackdown on political opponents.

The shocking revelations not only shed light on the dark and murky world of UAE’s smear campaign and the trail of shattered lives left in its wake; Kirkpatrick’s investigation also served as a warning to democracies about the threat from authoritarian regimes which appear to have no qualms whatsoever about targeting the citizens of another country.

Nada, who was at the centre of the UAE’s smear campaign, is suing dozens of parties, including the Abu Dhabi’s President, Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan — often known as MBZ — its national oil company ADNOC, Emirati officials and Alp Services.

“The United Arab Emirates and some of its top officials managed, directed and bankrolled a years-long ‘dark’ public relations campaign through the Swiss private investigative firm, Alp Services,” the complaint said.

The lawsuit claimed that “journalists” and a professor at George Washington University were paid, among others, to smear dozens of people, including Nada. The individuals mentioned in the lawsuit are alleged to be well-known figures within Europe’s Islamophobia scene. According to the New Yorker investigation, the UAE worked hand in glove with some of the most hateful anti-Muslim figures peddling the “great replacement” theory.

The lawsuit, based on over 8,000 documents procured by hackers from Alp’s internal servers, stated that the Swiss firm approached the UAE in 2017, offering to use “offensive viral communications” to defame Nada and dozens of other parties seen as hostile to the oil-rich Gulf state.

Around the same time, Abu Dhabi, with the support of Saudi Arabia, imposed a blockade on Qatar. Alp Services agreed to obtain “concrete evidence” about Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and prove that Lord Energy was a front company for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The lawsuit further claimed Lord Energy was seen as a serious business threat by the UAE and ADNOC, an incentive to eliminate the growing rival. “MBZ had ultimate approval authority over the enterprise’s disinformation operations,” the suit alleged.

OPINION: The dark, Islamophobic world of a UAE ‘dirty smear campaign’