Swiss newspaper accuses Qatar of spying on senior judge

Qatar orchestrated an operation to spy on a meeting with former Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber, responsible for investigating corruption in football and in particular the awarding of the 2022 World Cup. says the Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag (in German) Sunday February 12. Qatar denied the charges, while Lauber’s lawyer told the Swiss weekly that his client did not know he was being spied on and had not been blackmailed after the meeting.

According NZZ Am Sonntag, Sunday supplement of this German-speaking Zurich daily, the Gulf country would have orchestrated a spy operation to hide microphones during an informal meeting held on June 16, 2017 in Bern (Switzerland) between Michael Lauber and the boss of Fifa, Gianni Infantino. The meeting was said to have taken place at the luxurious Hotel Schweizerhof, which has been owned by Qataris since 2009, in a conference room located in the same corridor as the embassy of the gas emirate, according to the NZZ.

The emirate was afraid of losing the organization of the World Cup

After the awarding of the 2022 World Cup, Qatar for a time feared losing the right to organize the competition, accused of corruption and human rights violations. The Qatari authorities then allegedly spied on members of Fifa and Laubert, employing former CIA agents, according to the NZZwho claims to have obtained “official secret documents that attest to this espionage operation” at the Hotel Schweizerhof.

The newspaper also explains that sources with knowledge of the file described the operation to him, on condition of anonymity, specifying that it bore the code name “Mont Cervin Project”, from the name of the famous mountain located in the Alps, at the Italian-Swiss border. According to these sources, the purpose of this operation would have been to be able to put pressure on the Attorney General to conceal from his hierarchy his contacts with Gianni Infantino. Lauber was dismissed in June 2019 from the investigation into a corruption scandal at Fifa, due to his undeclared contacts in 2016 and 2017 with Infantino, then he ended up resigning a year later, in July 2020.