Abu Dhabi Secrets is recorded in this encyclopedia from the source named below.
Overview
"Abu Dhabi Secrets" refers to a series of investigative reports published in 2023 by members of the European Investigative Collaborations and other media outlets, based on documents obtained from the 2021 hacking of the Swiss private intelligence company Alp Services. The investigations reported that Alp had been contracted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government to gather information on and discredit individuals and organizations in Europe who were alleged to be associated with Qatar or the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the investigations, Alp compiled information on more than 1,000 individuals and 400 organizations in 18 European countries and passed their names and other data to Emirati intelligence services. The reported campaign included the dissemination of negative information through established media, social media and websites, as well as attempts to influence financial institutions. Several individuals and organizations were reportedly targeted on the basis of tenuous or false allegations. The campaign was linked by the investigators to the political conflict between the UAE and Qatar, particularly the Qatar diplomatic crisis that began in 2017. The disclosures subsequently led to legal proceedings and investigations in several European countries and to lawsuits by some of the alleged targets. The founder of Alp, Mario Brero, disputed the findings and, through his lawyers, stated that some of the leaked documents had been falsified and that many of the investigators' conclusions were based on false or imagined assumptions.
Source and reuse
The descriptive text above is drawn from the English-language encyclopedia article Abu Dhabi Secrets, reused under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence and attributed in the sources block on this page. Figures in the infobox come from Wikidata and carry that project's own provenance; they should be checked against the cited source before being relied on.
Editorial note
This record is a sourced summary, not original research. Where the underlying material is silent on a point, this article is silent too. Last reviewed 2026-09-23.