Revealed: The UAE’s secret plan to wage an economic war on Qatar!
It seems there are no limits as to how far the UAE will go to see Qatar financially destroyed.
The Intercept, a US-based investigative website, revealed a secret plan by the UAE to attack Qatar's financial system. The plan was obtained from the folder of a hacked email account belonging to Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the US.
The Intercept reported that the plot was based on attacking Qatar’s currency ‘using bonds and derivatives manipulation.’
The UAE also aimed to increase Qatar’s debts by controlling its ‘yield curve,’ reported Al Jazeera.
According to the report, Luxembourg’s private Banque Havilland — owned by controversial British financier David Rowland — developed the plan for the UAE. Its objective was to push Qatar’s economy to collapse, reduce the value of its bonds and increase its credit cost, ultimately creating a currency crisis that drains the country’s reserves.
Rowland has long had close relationships with the UAE leadership, particularly with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed.
The Qatar debt project is grandiose in its ambitions, according to the Gulf Times. ‘Control the yield curve, decide the future,’ read the planning document, referring to a standard financial-industry graph showing a country’s borrowing costs for debt that is due at different dates.
The height and shape of the yield curve is thought to be a reflection of how healthy an economy is and influences what financing options are available to a country.
Targeting a nation’s economy using financial manipulation would be a dramatic break from traditional norms of diplomacy and even warfare.
The metadata of the slide deck obtained by The Intercept indicates Vladimir Bolelyy, an analyst with Banque Havilland, as the creator. A call by The Intercept to Bolelyy’s receptionist was rebuffed.
Meanwhile, one of the plan’s stated aims is forcing Qatar to share football’s 2022 World Cup, reported The Peninsula.
The strategy calls for using a public relations campaign to point the international football body FIFA to Qatar’s dwindling cash reserves, which they expected to fall, and making a case that the country can’t afford to build the necessary infrastructure.
The outline concludes with the hope that the economic war will make it harder for Qatar to continue building stadiums and other assets needed to host the games:
“If Qatar now spends its reserves on protecting the currency and domestic credit markets, there is less dry powder to fund the infrastructure spending.”
The UAE, according to the document, then hopes to make a push for the Gulf Cooperation Council to host the premiere global sports event across the member nations, rather than in Qatar alone.
