When she received an email from a New Yorker journalist at the end of February with photos of her former residence and the door of her former apartment in the Paris area, Sihem Souid was initially suspicious. Quickly reassured by the seriousness of her interlocutor, the former police officer and project manager in the Ministry of Justice, who switched to public relations, fell into another fear: the conviction of having been spied on.
Two recent investigations by Mediapart and the American reference magazine New Yorker revealed that a few years ago the French lobbyist was the subject of a destabilization attempt, most likely hatched by the United Arab Emirates via a Swiss business news firm. his wrong? In all probability, she works for Qatar, which she officially represents in France and Belgium.
According to our information, Sihem Souid has asked his lawyer Me Céline Astolfe to file a complaint with the Paris public prosecutor’s office this Thursday for alleged invasion of privacy, violation of the secrecy of letters and theft. The director of the Swiss company implicitly concerned by this complaint against X announces through his lawyer that he “categorically denies” any crime.
This alleged barbouzerie affair has its origins in the severe crisis that Qatar faced between 2017 and 2021 with Saudi Arabia and its three allies – the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain. The gas state had been subjected to a blockade. According to research by Mediapart and the New Yorker, the United Arab Emirates would have been willing to do anything to harm their neighbor Qatar. Among other things, by resorting to the most abominable methods.
A Swiss company with a sulphurous reputation
Thanks to data leaks, the two media reveal that the Gulf state signed lucrative contracts with the Swiss company Alp Services at the time. Mario Brero, the founding boss of the Geneva-based company, which presents itself as a specialist in “public affairs and communications consulting” as well as “economic and political intelligence”, has a sulphurous reputation. The seventy-year-old is no stranger to the French judiciary. In June 2014, he was found guilty by the Paris Criminal Court of complicity and concealment of breach of professional secrecy, freeing him from punishment.
The burly businessman was prosecuted for receiving secret bank and telephone information about the private life of Olivier Fric, husband of Anne Lauvergeon, former boss of ‘Areva, three years earlier. The nuclear giant then became embroiled in the Uramin Affair, the takeover of a Canadian mining company that had turned into a fiasco. Alp Services would then have been used to harm the former CEO through her husband. “I remember a character who was certainly warm and intelligent, but devious and cunning,” confides Jean-Pierre Versini-Campinchi, Olivier Fric’s lawyer.
In the case of the UAE treaties uncovered by this gigantic data leak, Alp Services appears to have multiplied operations of destabilizing and manipulating public opinion. In the New Yorker, the American boss of a successful import-export company based in Italy tells how, thanks to information from a hacker group, he found out how his company’s reputation was being destroyed by a vile disinformation campaign directed by Alp Services and his boss Mario Brero. His main mistake was being the son of one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Emiratis’ pet peeve.
Many goals
The potential targets of this war of influence were obviously numerous. For example, in one of the documents collected by Mediapart, Alp Services offers its Emirati client – a man identified as a secret agent – to conduct an investigation against Sihem Souid as a person of influence in Qatar. The proposed mission was to investigate the former officer but also her husband and her company Edile Consulting to find “negative information”.
The New York journalist obtained a file from Alp Services, which contains 12 photos of the lobbyist’s former accommodation: the access door to his apartment, circled in a red circle, his balcony, his mailboxes, and even the inside of his mailbox. The pictures are stamped with “reco” for identification. These are the famous pictures that the reporter sent to the former official at the end of February as part of writing his article.
Contacted, Sihem Souid said she was disgusted by these discoveries. “Qatar is being targeted through me, no one is being fooled,” she said. And I’m not surprised to learn that the UAE is on the move. These stupid methods are outrageous. They are not attacking my work but my personal life by monitoring the apartment where we lived with my husband and children. »
The entrepreneur recalls feeling like she was being followed at the end of 2017. The following year his home was broken into. The criminals stole jewelry as well as his old phone and computer. A year later, a second burglary with the computer and phone stolen again. She also mentions having her purse stolen at a restaurant.
“The culprits were never found, but I am now convinced that there is a connection,” she says. Until the publication of these articles, she had never heard of Alp Services and Mario Brero. “We learn that Ms Souid, her family and her company have been spied on as part of an operation to influence and destabilize Qatar. There is an urgent need to investigate these extremely serious procedures through a pharmacy with very worrying practices,” stresses Me Céline Astolfe, his lawyer. “But let those who seek to intimidate me know that I will not back down and that I will pursue my rights in court. It is abnormal to let the leaders of the Emirates use the European space, and France in particular, as a playground without reacting,” concludes Sihem Souid.
Already a civilian participant in the investigation into suspected extortion in the entourage of the PSG boss
Asked to do so, Me Christian Lüscher, Mario Brero’s lawyer, denies all allegations. “My client categorically denies being directly or indirectly associated with a crime,” emphasizes the Geneva lawyer. He is absolutely not concerned about the burglary or invasion of the home that would have killed Ms Souid. To suggest otherwise would be a slanderous accusation. And Mr. Lüscher, to denounce the use of data “which one might think should be destroyed”. “The mere use can constitute a criminal offence,” he warns.
This isn’t the first time the name of Sihem Souid has surfaced as a potential victim of a destabilization operation. The forty-something is a civil party in the court investigations on suspicion of extortion in the wake of the PSG boss.