Qatari ambassador to Belgium attempts to conceal Hezbollah funding
Friday 07/August/2020 - 03:50 PM
Mahmoud Mohamadi
For many months, Qatar's ambassador to Belgium, Abdulrahman bin Mohammed Sulaiman Al-Khulaifi, with the help of a large German public relations company, worked to conceal Doha’s crimes of supporting Hezbollah with money and weapons.
Khulaifi offered huge sums of money to a former Western intelligence agent, in a new scandal to be added to the file of Qatari funding for terrorism.
Beginning in 2016, a German security contractor known in the media as Jason G. began working undercover in Doha for the benefit of a Western intelligence agency, with the aim of gathering information about Qatar's activities in financing terrorist organizations.
The mission, which lasted until the beginning of 2017, ended with Jason obtaining a valuable dossier that includes information about an arms deal that a Qatari company bought from Eastern Europe for Hezbollah, as well as funds collected by two Qatari organizations working under the guise of charitable work for the benefit of the Lebanese militia, with the full knowledge of a member of the ruling Qatari family and government officials.
Jason, a long-serving undercover agent who served for 16 years in a powerful Western intelligence agency, obtained the file from a senior Qatari security official who succeeded in recruiting him as a source, according to the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung.
Doha’s exploitation
After Jason returned to Berlin in mid-2017, he met with an unnamed lawyer in the German capital who had good contacts with political networks in Germany.
According to Die Zeit, this lawyer introduced Jason to Michael Inacker, CEO of WMP Eurocom, Germany's most famous public relations and lobbying company.
Inacker has a strong relationship with Khulaifi, and the German company has a track record of doing business with Doha.
In a meeting in Berlin, Jason showed the dossier to Inacker, and they discussed how much the file is worth, with estimates reaching €10 million, since “the documents can play a very important role in anti-terrorist financing operations,” according to Inacker.
Inacker made contact with German intelligence and presented them the file, and the matter was then transferred to the security services in Berlin, which concluded that “the matter is of interest and related to terrorist financing,” Die Zeit reported.
Then, attempts to cover up the documents began, as Inaker presented a picture of the file to Khulaifi.
Financing terrorist organizations
In early 2019, Inacker's mediation succeeded in organizing the first meeting between Jason and Khulaifi in Brussels, where the three men had lunch.
Since then, Jason and Khulaifi met six times in Brussels, during which the latter expressed his happiness at Jason’s participation in purifying his country of those involved in financing terrorist organizations and pledging to "expel the suspects" from the corridors of Qatari authority.
Jason told Die Zeit that he received €10,000 in each meeting with Khulaifi, and then the Qataris gave him €100,000.
At the beginning of 2019, Jason and the Qatari ambassador signed a memorandum of understanding, a copy of which was shared with the German magazine Stern, which stipulated that Jason would work one year as a consultant to Doha for €10,000 per month, in addition to other payments during the same period.
In exchange for its mediation, WMP Eurocom received 20% of the total funds that Jason obtained under the memorandum of understanding he signed in August 2019.
Despite this amount of money, Jason kept the original file and did not give it to Khulaifi, who then sought Inacker’s mediation and began seeking to sign a silence agreement with Jason.
At the beginning of 2020, Khulaifi offered for Jason to sign a silence agreement in exchange €750,000. The agreement obliged Jason not to talk about the file in his possession or the information it contained, stipulating a huge fine in case he violated the agreement, according to Die Zeit.
The Berliner Zeitung, citing unnamed sources, explained that Inaker was a mediator in the negotiations between Khulaifi and Jason for the silence agreement.
The agreement stipulated that Inacker’s company would get €300,000 from Qatar if it succeeded in persuading Jason to sign the agreement.
Inacker reached out to a large law firm in Germany to assist Jason in drafting and signing the silence agreement with Qatar.
Then Jason signed a contract with the law firm on May 18 to be his official representative and to start drafting the agreement with Qatar, according to Stern magazine.
However, on July 13, Jason sent an email to the law firm informing it of his withdrawal from the silence agreement with Qatar.
Jason justified his refusal to sign the agreement, telling Die Zeit that he had “concluded the first deal with the Qataris because they pledged to expel Hezbollah's financiers from the circles of politics and power,” but they did not do anything, so he backed out from signing the silence agreement.
Then, Jason revealed the information he possessed to Die Zeit, saying that it was revealed “to expose Hezbollah's financiers in Qatar and the Qatari officials who provide them with protection.”
