Newspaper report alleges Qatar sabotaged 2022 FIFA World Cup rivals with smear campaign

Qatar’s controversial bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup broke the world football governing body’s rules by running a secret “black operations” campaign to sabotage rivals competing to stage the tournament.

According to a report today in London’s The Sunday Times, leaked documents show how the bid paid a public relations firm and former US Central Intelligence Agents to produce fake propaganda about its main rivals, the United States and Australia, during its successful campaign to host the next World Cup.

FIFA has already investigated corruption allegations involving the Qatar bid, but did not find any evidence that it had bought votes so the tournament is set to go ahead as planned. It will be the first time the event has been hosted in the Middle East, even though Qatar has no history of playing top-class football.

A campaign such as that alleged by The Sunday Times would have broken FIFA's bidding rules.

Qatar beat rival bids from the United States, Australia, South Korea and Japan to the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

FIFA's rules say World Cup bidders should not make "any written or oral statements of any kind, whether adverse or otherwise, about the bids or candidatures of any other member association".

In a statement Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy said it "rejects each and every allegation put forward by The Sunday Times".

The newspaper claims to have seen leaked documents that show the Qatari bid team set out to create propaganda to give the impression that a World Cup would not be supported domestically.

The Sunday Times report included an email, purportedly from Michael Holtzman, President of the communications and PR company BLJ in New York, who was working for Qatar 2022, to Ahmad Nimeh, an adviser on Qatar’s bid team. Dated 17th May 2010 and under the subject line “strategy”, it says “for the past 4 months, we have undertaken an extensive campaign to undermine the 2018/2022 candidacies of competitor countries, particularly Australia and the US.”

According to the newspaper, Holtzman said this included “recruiting journalists, bloggers and high-profile figures in each market to raise questions and promote negative aspects of their respective bids in the media. Dozens of articles have appeared in US, Australian and international media that have embarrassed or undermined these bids and put bid leadership on (the) defensive ... developing reports, studies and legislation that provide embarrassing details or undermine central aspects of each bid ... we have delivered several deeply revealing intelligence reports on individual targets that have been used internally by the bid”.

Holtzman added “we have a group of pro-rugby students in Melbourne, Australia, who will start appearing at rugby matches with signs ‘Hands off our rugby! No to World Cup!’ in June.”

Other parts of the alleged smear campaign include a respected academic being paid US$9,000 to write a negative report on the huge economic cost of an American World Cup, which was then distributed to news media around the world.

Journalists, bloggers and high-profile figures were also allegedely recruited in each country to hype up negative aspects of their respective bids.

This included a group of American physical education teachers recruited to ask their US Congressmen to oppose a US World Cup on the grounds that the money would be better used on high school sports.

The documents seen by The Sunday Times - which the paper says were leaked by a whistleblower who worked on the 2022 bid team - were apparently unavailable during the earlier FIFA inquiry.

In its statement, Qatar's Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy advised "we have been thoroughly investigated and have been forthcoming with all information related to our bid, including the official investigation led by US attorney Michael Garcia.

"We have strictly adhered to all FIFA's rules and regulations for the 2018/2022 World Cup bidding process."

A FIFA statement added "a thorough investigation was conducted by Michael Garcia and his conclusions are available in the report", referring to the completed two-year inquiry.

Qatar won the right to stage the tournament in December 2010.