Journalists, politicians or celebrities from the world of football have been monitored on behalf of the Qatari state by a group of hackers based in India.
What do Michel Platini, Senator Nathalie Goulet and American-Hungarian lawyer Mark Somos have in common? According to a survey published Sunday in the British daily The Sunday Times, all were targets of hackers hired to protect Qatar’s reputation. These personalities – who would be around a hundred in all – have most often been targeted for their work or the taking of critical positions on the awarding and organization of the Football World Cup, the kick-off of which takes place on 20 november.
According to data retrieved by the Sunday Times and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) this year, it was from 2019 that these operations began to hack mailboxes or take remote control of the microphones and cameras of the computers of targeted people. “The investigation clearly indicates that the client (of the hackers) is the host of the next World Cup: Qatar”, write the journalists. The recourse to this group of hackers based in India would have been made through former British police or intelligence officers, now working in the private sector.
Among the personalities targeted are journalists, such as that of the Sunday Times Jonathan Calvert, who had investigated the alleged corruption maneuvers that led to the awarding of the event to Qatar in 2010. Also spied on was centrist senator Nathalie Goulet, who had accused Qatar of financing “Islamic terrorism”and the American-Hungarian lawyer Mark Somos, who filed a complaint against the ruling family of Qatar before the United Nations High Council for Human Rights.
“A manifest and villainous violation of (the) private life”
The former president of UEFA, Michel Platini, yet a great defender of Qatar’s candidacy to organize the World Cup, would also have been targeted. This would have happened shortly before he was heard by French justice as part of an investigation into suspicions of corruption in the awarding of the World Cup to the gas emirate.
In reaction to the statements of the English newspaper, the triple golden ball said to itself “surprised and deeply shocked”, in a press release. The former captain of the France team is studying “all legal action he is determined to take – if the information of the Sunday Times are accurate – to what appears to be a gross and villainous violation of his privacy”.
In a statement, a Qatari official denounced allegations “manifestly false and baseless”which rest “on a single source who claims that his client was Qatar, without providing any proof”. “Qatar will not sit idly by […]and every legal option available to us is being explored to ensure that those responsible will be held accountable.”, he still warns. Beyond Qatar, the investigation of the Sunday Times reveals many other cases of hacking of personalities carried out by the same Indian group, on behalf of English law firms and autocratic regimes.