How Qatar allegedly hacked the critics of the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2022
In the wake of criticism going on all over the world, Qatar once again finds itself in the middle of the criticism list before its World Cup. According to the news, by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), a gulf nation, Qatar itself was involved in conducting a spy operation against a number of political figures, a dozen lawyers, journalists, and other VIPs due to their criticism of Qatar hosting FIFA World Cup.
The hackers were recruited in India as per the TBIJ report. The Indian hacking company “WhiteInt” a gurgaon- based company headed by Aditya Jain, was behind this. Jain admits that he received a request from Swiss-based private investigator Jonas Rey claiming to be the intermediary of a Gulf State, which happened to be Qatar.
According to the report, Mr Jain admitted that he had hacked in the past but did not know some of the people named on his database and denied hacking the others listed.
Aditya Jain, who was an associate director with Deloitte’s cyber unit in India, has now been fired from the job after his hacking operations got exposed. “We are aware of the recent media reports outlining serious allegations about an individual who used to work for Deloitte India. This individual no longer works for Deloitte India,” a Deloitte spokesperson told the Economic Times.
Rey runs a firm named “Athena intelligence” and has asked Jain to target several more individuals.
People who were hacked were the editor of the Sunday Times, Jonathan Calvert, who exposed the corruption that led FIFA to award the World Cup to Qatar in 2010.Mark Somos, lawyer based in Germany, who filed a complaint against the Qatari royal family with the United Nations Human Rights Council. Businessmen such as Ghanem Nuseibeh wrote a report on corruption linked to the World Cup 2022. The French politician Nathalie Goulet, who works on Qatar illegally funding Islamic terrorism.
Rey had instructed Jain to hack three more targets: Nick Raudenski, a former investigator for Fifa and Uefa; Alan Suderman, an Associated Press journalist who had written about Qatar’s underhanded campaign to host the FIFA World Cup and Rokhaya Diallo, a prominent campaigner who had been publicly criticise the Gulf state’s over migrant workers salary to build the World Cup stadiums.
However, a Qatari official stated that the TBIJ report is false and baseless and that undermines the credibility of TBIJ. They pointed out that the report relied on a single source which does not provide the slightest proof. He also denounces the connection between the Sunday times, TBIJ with its neighboring enemy, the UAE.
