Raven Operation and Israeli Corruption

Benaw Izzat | Exclusive to iKurd.net

In 2019 Reuters published the testimony of Lauri Straud [1] , after leaving the NSA in 2014 she worked as a hacker for the UAE as part of Operation Raven. The aim of the game was to hack into the computer systems and communications of the Emirate’s enemies. The targets were numerous, but Qatar was high on the list.

Lauri Straud defected the day his employer asked her to spy on American targets. As Reuters recounts in her testimony, Lauri was first told to work on the “Purple briefing”.

At this stage Raven would pursue a purely defensive mission, protecting the government of the UAE from hackers and other threats.

Soon after she received the “Black briefing”, Raven becomes “the offensive, operational division of NESA [2] and will never be acknowledged to the general public,” the Black memo says.

The first leaks began to worry the Trump administration and in 2017 Rudolph Guliani held a “cyber security” meeting with Qatar in 2017 and early 2018 [3]. June 22, 2019 at the Trump International Hotel, Rudolph Guliani will play a strange intermediary role with Emirati princess Hend Al Qassemi, who is trying to divorce her Qatari husband [4].

A former SEAL, Scott Taylor, who has long worked in Yemen on behalf of Hunt Oil and the US services, is proposed as ambassador to Qatar by Trump, only for the latter to make a surprise withdrawal. Scott Taylor is reputed to have been fully aware of the cyber operation leaks, but in the end his political career came to a swift end.

Today, Scott Taylor is President of the US business Qatar Council.

On sept 14th 2021 three former NSA employees are condemned for conducting hacking related service for account of the UAE [5]. Earlier in January of the same year, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain put an end to their diplomatic dispute with Qatar.

Some groups who thought themselves allies of Qatar see this change as a betrayal. The secrecy that was supposed to surround the Raven files begins to crumble.

A source informs French journalist Bernard Nicolas of the existence of a leakage Qatari corruption file. Marc Eichinger, a former French intelligence contractor and specialist in international corruption cases, is asked to authenticate and facilitate understanding of these documents in March 2021. They will get 32 pages, concerning numerous people and meetings.

What followed was a lengthy process of cross-checking the numerous documents, which concerned many people, some of them unknown to the public. Some of the documents do not concern payments from Qatar to third parties, but rather minutes of meetings whose context can be traced. The documents are signed, and the signatures pose no particular problem: they are legitimate and never similar [6]. Some of these letters include a 2D barcode for diplomatic identification.

Four letters concerned Israel, and Marc Eichinger gave all the documents he had obtained, together with a copy of his passport, to the Israeli embassy in Switzerland. In June 2021, Naftali Bennett announced an end to the flow of cash from Qatar to the Gaza Strip.

On September 26, 2021, Marc Eichinger also contacted Shurat Hadin in a very explicit email to warn this organization, which defends Israeli legal interests abroad, of the imminent publication of documents relating to Israeli corruption.

The full set of documents is also provided to the doyen of financial investigating judges and to the French anti-corruption police.

The documents are published in full on the Blast-info.fr website, and some in English on iKurd.net.

Some of these documents relating to the Libyan and Syrian conflicts are included in the book Jeux de guerre published by Marc Eichinger in 2022 (Massot Editions). They are placed in context.

None of the beneficiaries of the Qatari funds filed a lawsuit, with the exception of Bernard Henry Levy, who lost his case and was ordered to compensate the defendants.

The publication of the documents allows other entities to settle accounts quickly.

On June 24th 2022, Prince Charles made very awkward comments during the opening ceremony of a summit of Commonwealth prime ministers and presidents in Rwanda [7] .

“The Prince of Wales has told Commonwealth leaders that keeping the Queen as head of state or becoming a republic is “a matter for each member country to decide”. A serious blow for the Queen and the British foreign office.

Revenge was not long in coming, as the Sunday Times, echoed by many major British newspapers, reported cash payments made by Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani to Prince Charles from 2011 to 2015. The Raven documents are not published, but the Prince admits to the payments without any official counterpart.

On the strength of the information they have, the American judges will also be able to indict 41 people and pay out $201 million to FIFA in connection with the corruption linked to the awarding of the World Cup.

Qatar’s corruption hit the headlines when Belgian judge Michel Claise arrested several members of the European Parliament, including Eva Kaili. According to the official press release from the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, Michel Claise has decided to withdraw from the case “despite the absence of any real evidence to cast doubt on the probity of any of the parties involved, and the substantial work he and his investigators have accomplished in this case”.

The Raven documents are not linked to the arrests in Belgium, but history shows that when it comes to corruption with the Qatari regime, the pressures can be particularly strong.

Marc Eichinger claims that his source mentioned that, as in France, Qatar had carried out a large-scale undercover operation in Israel, hence the need to obtain full publication of the Raven files. Why was this?

In an article published in February 2019, Times of Israel [8] sum up the roots of the tragedy that the country will encounter on October 7th 2023.

“In 2018 Qatar gave Gaza $200 million for humanitarian aid, fuel, and wages for Hamas clerks. In addition, it gave UNRWA, the UN agency that deals with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, $50 million, all with Israel’s approval. “

Israel’s approval being essentially Benjamin Netanyahu willingness to do so.

“According to the report, the rate at which money is being funneled to Gaza has been increasing, prompting Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to hold a special review of the situation during which state legal and defense authorities were required to confirm that the transfers did not constitute a violation of Israeli and international sanctions on Hamas due to its status as a terror group.”

Avichai Mandelblit is now retired, but every Israeli can pay tribute to him. He will go down in history as the man who clearly saw the danger on the basis of a report that has remained confidential.

This report must be published and all political parties should demand its publication.

In another case, on November21st 2019, Netanyahu was officially indicted for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud. He is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

One year later he became Prime Minister.

1 Exclusive: Ex-NSA cyberspies reveal how they helped hack foes of UAE (reuters.com)
2 The equivalent of the NSA for the UAE
3 ‘Had I not been there, I wouldn’t have met Rudy’: The tale of the Arabian princess and the Trump International Hotel – The Washington Post
4 Inside Giuliani’s dual roles: Power-broker-for-hire and shadow foreign policy adviser – The Washington Post
5 Office of Public Affairs | Three Former U.S. Intelligence Community and Military Personnel Agree to Pay More Than $1.68 Million to Resolve Criminal Charges Arising from Their Provision of Hacking-Related Services to a Foreign Government | United States Department of Justice
6 Israeli journalist Amir Shuan published a comment of facebook concerning only the four Israeli related documents and mention that graphologists said it was a sophisticated fraud based on just the signatures. He couldn’t provide the graphologists report.
7 Charles tells Commonwealth leaders dropping Queen is ‘for each to decide’ | Commonwealth of Nations | The Guardian
8 Qatar gave over $1.1 billion to Gaza Strip from 2012-18, ministers told | The Times of Israel