Report: UAE plot to wage financial war on Qatar revealed
A United Arab Emirates plan to attack Qatar’s financial system has been revealed in a folder of an email account belonging to the UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef al-otaiba.
The Intercept, a Us-based investigative website, obtained the folder and exposed the “plot”, which involves an attack on Qatar’s currency “using bonds and derivatives manipulation”, according to aljazeera. com.
The UAE also aims to increase Qatar’s debt by controlling its “yield curve”, according to the report.
According to the Intercept, Luxembourg’s private Banque Havilland — owned by the family of Britain’s controversial financier David Rowland — developed the plan for the UAE.
Its objective is 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.
PR campaign
The document further reveals that while weakening Qatar’s economy, the UAE would also launch a PR campaign to draw attention to this development as part of its campaign to have Qatar eventually stripped of its role of being the host of the football World Cup 2022.
The new project comes amid — and, if implemented, would escalate — a regional crisis that reached new heights in June, when the UAE and Saudi Arabia led a bloc of Arab countries in blockading and cutting off diplomatic relations with Qatar.
The Intercept report said “the current pressure Qatar’s currency is under as a result of an ongoing blockade imposed by the UAE means those direct, overt steps may be more effective economic sabotage than anything the slides outline”.
According to the website, Roland has long-established ties with the UAE’S leadership, particularly the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Banque Havillan is currently working on a new financial institution in cooperation with the UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, according to contracts and correspondence obtained by the Intercept outlining the terms of the deal.
The project is separate from the Qatar operation, but it reflects the close relationship between the bank and the UAE, according to the Intercept report.
The Qatar debt project would be grandiose in its ambitions.
“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.