Although “Qatargate” is as shocking as it is shameful, this scandal – of which we still only know the emerged part of the iceberg – is not a surprise for those who work on the influence of lobbies on politics European. It is the product of years of negligence of European officials with regard to lobbying practices exercised by repressive regimes in the “Bulle of Brussels” (even if national capital is not excluded from this phenomenon). On numerous occasions, our organization, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), has denounced the serious inadequacies of the rules which supervise this lobbying with European politicians in European institutions.
For many years, repressive regimes have subcontracted their diplomacy within the European Union (EU) to public relations companies, lobbyists and pressure groups, and it is a big business . The mission of the lobbyists consists in whitening the bloody reputations of dictators, in promoting trade agreements and lucrative investments established with totalitarian states, to make the sanctions forget or to dirty the dissidents.
Whether they put pressure on European institutions or national capitals, these lobbyists generally work in the shadows. The EU transparency register is still not compulsory for them, while countries like the United States have strict transparency requirements for the activities of representatives of foreign governments.
Azerbaijan’s bribes 2>
At the end of 2014, we finalized the report ” European pri firms Whitewashing Brutal Regimes “ (” These European companies which clean the reputations of repressive governments “), which brings together eighteen case studies of companies of public relations and consultants working in Europe for dubious regimes accused of war crimes and human rights violations.
This report shows in particular that in 2014 Qatar succeeded Russia as the more important customer of the Portland Communications lobbying company, questioned by the British public channel Channel 4 to practice what is called the “Astroturfing” (a technique consisting in simulating a spontaneous opinion movement and making it appear in the majority) in order to modify the image of the World Cup in Qatar.
In the same register, between 2012 and 2014, the Azerbaijani regime brought up billions of dollars by offshore companies to pay bribes, especially to the people involved in the megappeline Italy-Azerbaijan, the “Corridor South European gas “. European officials then participated in what was called “caviar diplomacy”, which aimed to embellish the image of a repressive regime by minimizing electoral fraud and blatant human rights violations .
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