Qatar eavesdropped on the participants of the meeting between FIFA president Gianni Infantino and the then state prosecutor of Switzerland during the investigation into football officials, the Swiss daily “Noye zircher Zeitung” announced today.
The report states that intelligence operatives linked to a former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer eavesdropped on a meeting involving Infantino and Swiss federal prosecutor Michael Lauber at a Qatari-owned hotel in Bern, which at the time housed the Qatari embassy.
The paper said documents and sources show surveillance was carried out for the “Matterhorn Project” – named after the famous Swiss mountain – to gather material on Lauber.
At the time, the prosecutor was overseeing a multi-year investigation by soccer officials that began in 2014 into suspected wrongdoing related to the organization of the World Cup, including Qatar’s winning campaign to host the 2022 tournament.
The paper recalled a 2021 AP report that Qatar spent millions of dollars over several years hiring Global Risk Advisors to spy on FIFA and international soccer officials to protect its household.