UAE sued in $2.8bn US lawsuit over 'dark PR' disinformation op

The United Arab Emirates and its powerful ruler were sued in a Washington court Wednesday, accused of bankrolling a "dark public relations" operation that falsely linked an American oil trader to terrorist financing.

The lawsuit filed by the trader Hazim Nada in the District of Columbia alleges that starting in 2017 the UAE paid a Swiss private intelligence firm, Alp Services, to "seriously damage" his reputation and business in a sweeping smear campaign.

The alleged operation against Nada, first reported by The New Yorker last year, spotlights a booming industry of what security analysts call "disinformation-for-hire" enterprises that seed false narratives and peddle influence operations on behalf of governments and other paying clients.

Nada is suing dozens of parties including the UAE, its president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan -- often known as MBZ -- its national oil company ADNOC, Emirati officials and Alp Services.

Nada is seeking damages worth $2.77 billion over the campaign that tipped his commodities trading firm Lord Energy into bankruptcy, his lawyers said.

"The United Arab Emirates and some of its top officials managed, directed, and bankrolled a years-long 'dark' public relations campaign through the Swiss private investigative firm, Alp Services," the complaint said.

The lawsuit claimed that the UAE, along with the Geneva-based Alp, paid "journalists" and a professor at George Washington University among others to smear dozens of people including Nada.

There was no immediate comment from the UAE embassy in Washington, Alp Services or the professor, Lorenzo Vidino.

The lawsuit, based on thousands of documents procured by anonymous hackers from Alp's internal servers, stated that the Swiss firm approached the UAE in 2017, offering to use "offensive viral communications" to defame Nada and dozens of other parties seen as hostile to the oil-rich Gulf state.

The plan relied on sowing doubts about Nada, who was born in the US state of Maryland, by saying Lord Energy was a front company for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt in 1928.

- 'Malign influence ops' -

Alp boasted of its ability to conduct "disinformation operations" on companies and individuals, saying its clients included nation states and the wealthy, according to court filings, audio recordings and other documents seen by AFP.

In one exchange with a representative of the UAE government, Alp declared that its actions -- which included fraudulently posing as Nada to illegally obtain telephone records and other confidential information -- managed to bankrupt Lord Energy in less than two years.

The lawsuit claimed Lord Energy was seen as a serious business threat by the UAE and ADNOC, an incentive to eliminate the "growing rival."

"MBZ had ultimate approval authority over the enterprise's disinformation operations," the suit alleged.

In recent years, the UAE has been repeatedly accused of what intelligence experts call "illicit influence operations" in the United States and Europe.

"This was only possible because MBZ and the UAE knew they'd face little, if any, blowback," Benjamin Freeman, from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told AFP.

"It's long past time that the architects of these malign influence ops were punished too. This (Hazim Nada's) case would take an important step in that direction."

Nada said he has passed on more than 8,000 of Alp's internal documents -- procured from hackers -- to US law enforcement agencies.

The UAE has long opposed the Muslim Brotherhood and designated it as a terrorist group in 2014.

Nada's father, Youssef, was once a prominent figure in the Islamist group, but he himself had no ties to it, the lawsuit said.

The attack on Nada fit with the UAE's broader campaign against its Gulf rival Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood group, according to the lawsuit.