The UAE spends $ 350,000 to embellish its ambassador’s record in Washington, on its Internet search sites

Mohammed Al-Minshawi-Washington

Documents revealed by the US Department of Justice, seen by Al-Jazeera Net, about the contract of the UAE embassy in Washington with a technology and public relations company, in order to clear the record of its senior diplomats and all that is related to the UAE from negative coverage on the Internet.

The company was mandated to scan the electronic content record of Ambassador Youssef Al-Otaiba and his wife.

The documents submitted by Tirakit, headquartered in Syracuse, in the northern state of New York, on March 24, showed that they received two payments of $ 175,000 each.

The company received the first payment on July 26, 2019, then the second installment on October 8 last, with checks issued by the UAE embassy in Washington.

The contract was signed by Patrick Daniel and McLaren Cumming, director of the company that worked for Hillary Clinton's 2016 election campaign in a number of major states.

The Department of Justice obliges US lobby and public relations firms to register contracts signed with foreign countries and publish them on the website of the department's Foreign Customer Registration Unit.

The contract image revealed that the company is supporting the Emirates strategy in the American search sites on the Internet (Search Engine Optimization Strategy).

Al-Jazeera Net has spoken to a technology expert, and he mentioned that these tasks include blocking and removing negative information from appearing in the results of Google search engine and other leading search sites, in addition to highlighting positive contents when searching for this person or that country.

The tasks also include pushing "with the positive content of the customer to appear on top of the search results, and scanning or pushing the negative content of the internal pages that the browser does not usually reach," as the expert stated to Al Jazeera Net.

The company has served in coordination with Harper Group in the capital, Washington, which is chaired by Richard Clarke, a former White House official and senior advisor to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in the US capital.

The company's efforts included dealing with content and materials related to the UAE and its ambassador to Washington on social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.