The final game in the World Cup nears, but its host nation, Qatar has already clearly come out the loser. The Emirate (pronounced Kuh Taar) spent a staggering $200 billion on stadium and logistical infrastructure, but also, it is alleged, handed out tens of millions more in questionable payments to football’s governing body, FIFA, as well as to members of the European Parliament to overlook its human rights violations. Qatar is also in the middle of another controversy involving its financial dealings with Jared Kushner, when he was a White House advisor, that are now under investigation by Congressional committees in Washington. In summary, this tiny Arab nation has certainly made a splash, but from now on will be at the center of three of the world’s biggest scandals. Clearly, the strenuous efforts by its ambitious Emir to garner world attention have worked, but not favorably. Instead, Qatar is now in the running to win the 2022 World Cup for Corruption.
Qatar became independent from the United Kingdom in 1971 and remains a constitutional monarchy headed by 44-year-old Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. It is smaller than Connecticut, but is the world’s fourth richest nation-state on a per-capita basis. Its population is only 225,000, but Qataris are looked after by a resident foreign workforce of 1.5 million most of the time, consisting of poorly-paid South Asian servants, oil field employees, and service personnel. The desert nation is fabulously rich because beneath its sand lies the world's third-largest natural gas reserves and oil reserves. And beginning in the 1970s, the country harnessed this endowment and has become one of the world's largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, or LNG.
The Emir is leader for life and a dictator. A charming, British-educated man with a harem of three and 13 offspring, he has raised his nation’s profile and influence through energy trade, investment clout, media ownership, and international sports networking. For instance, his pledge to spend gigantic sums on World Cup infrastructure landed him the gig. He also hobnobs with oligarchs and tycoons as owner of major European soccer team, Paris Saint-Germain Football Club. Qatar’s importance geopolitically has been leveraged because it built the largest military base in the Middle East for the American military, which has been used as a staging ground for the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwaiti invasions, among other adventures.
The country is not a democracy, has no free press, but has global influence through its ownership of worldwide broadcast network, Al Jazeera. The Emir also heads the Qatar Investment Authority board of directors, with $450 billion in assets, which owns large stakes in Barclays Bank, Volkswagen, Vivendi, Royal Dutch Shell, and Harrods, among others. This is the vehicle that allegedly played a role in the Kushner scandal Washington that I’ve written about here. Qatar’s purchase, through a Canadian intermediary, of a Manhattan skyscraper in financial difficulty from the Kushner family (when Jared was in the White House with Donald Trump) has been under investigation in Congress since 2020. Last week, however, Congressional committees broadened their probe by requesting information from the State and Defense departments to determine if “Kushner’s financial conflict of interest may have led him to improperly influence U.S. tax, trade and national security policies for his own financial gain.”
Also last week, Qatar’s involvement in the ongoing FIFA corruption saga broke wide open. The FIFA scandal began in 2015 when officials were indicted for corrupt practices, but for the first time the U.S. Department of Justice accused representatives of Russia and Qatar as the culprits behind the bribes given to FIFA officials to get the rights to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. “The U.S. prosecutors on Monday explicitly revealed details about money paid to five members of FIFA’s top board ahead of the 2010 vote to choose Russia and Qatar as hosts,” wrote The New York Times. Prosecutors described the scheme of money laundering and shell companies, and named FIFA recipients of the proceeds.
Then, on December 9 in Brussels, all hell broke loose when four officials of the European Parliament were accused of receiving money and gifts from a “Gulf state” (later identified in the Belgian press as Qatar) to influence decisions. Prosecutors made 20 raids in Belgium and Italy and seized more than 1.5 million Euros in cash plus computers and cell phones. Authorities arrested prominent power broker, former broadcaster, and Greek socialist, Eva Kaili, who is one of the Parliament’s 14 vice presidents. She was also kicked out of her socialist party in Greece. She’s known as a vocal defender of Qatar and actually dubbed the country a “frontrunner in labor rights” despite international concerns about worker conditions there. She denied any wrongdoing.
Her partner and father have also been implicated, along with other left-wing luminaries who served on the board of a human rights and anti-corruption NGO ironically called Fight Impunity. Also cited in Belgian newspapers is a big shot with the International Trade Union Confederation and another NGO, No Peace Without Justice, which is focused on international criminal justice, human rights and promoting democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. In response to the news, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called allegations “baseless and gravely misinformed.”
The Brussels scandal has rocked all center-left parties in its Parliament, and across Europe. The “Left” is the second largest group in Europe’s 705-seat elected assembly. Co-chair of this group, Manon Aubry, was unapologetic and blunt about the investigations. “Qatar has bought the votes of this assembly in order to cover up the exploitation and death of migrant workers on the World Cup infrastructures,” he said. “I really want to send a very clear message to Qatar. You cannot buy MEPs like you can buy football clubs.”
Clearly, the world’s richest little Emirate has certainly outplayed the rest by gaining an inordinate share of influence and power globally through lobbying efforts and contacts contained in its Emir’s Rolodex. But other methods allegedly deployed by Qatar now soil its reputation and reveal that the country is obviously in the cross hairs of law enforcement in many jurisdictions. In June, U.S. General John Allen, former commander of NATO, resigned as President of the prestigious Brookings Institution after news broke that he was under investigation by the FBI for lobbying secretly on behalf of Qatar.
This cascade of controversy will dog Qatar for some time and there will be fewer high-profile, all-expense-paid trips for luminaries and public officials. Even before the World Cup began, and before charges were laid by U.S. and European officials, the Emir faced negative publicity about worker abuses and whispers about graft. “We initially dealt with the matter in good faith, but it soon became clear to us that the campaign (...) reached an amount of ferocity that made many wonder, unfortunately, about the real reasons and motives behind this campaign,” he said, a few weeks before charges were laid in the U.S. and Europe.
It is obvious now that the “real reasons” behind all that bad publicity was a string of questionable practices by a country that is no more than a gasoline station but aspires to be an important nation-state.
I laughed out loud when I read Diane's description of Qatar - gloried gas station - ohhh boy!!!
Also, the suspicious death of journalist Grant Wahl in Qatar is troubling.