Journalists, lawyers, former UEFA president Michel Platini and even a French senator have been the targets of hackers hired to protect Qatar's reputation as part of the organization of the 2022 World Cup, reveals an investigation published in the

Sunday Times

on Sunday .

These personalities were targeted for their investigations or critical positions on the awarding and organization of the World Cup by Qatar, which is due to begin on November 20, on the basis of calls for a boycott of the competition.

Among the targets are journalists, such as that of the Sunday Times Jonathan Calvert, who had investigated the corrupt maneuvers that led to the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar in 2010, a French senator, Nathalie Goulet, who had accused Qatar of financing Islamic terrorism, or the American-Hungarian lawyer Mark Somos having filed a complaint against the royal family of Qatar before the United Nations High Council for Human Rights.

The former president of Fifa, Michel Platini, a great defender of Qatar's candidacy to organize the World Cup, was also spied on.



The country is particularly implicated for the treatment of workers on construction sites linked to competition or respect for the rights of women and LGBT people.

According to data retrieved by the

Sunday Times

and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism this year, it was from 2019 that these operations to hack the mailboxes of around fifty personalities began, carried out by a group of Indian hackers.

This would have happened shortly before he was heard by French justice as part of an investigation into suspicions of corruption in the awarding of the World Cup to the Gulf country.

The use of the Indian group of hackers would have been made through former British police or intelligence officers, now working in the private sector, details the

Sunday Times

investigation .

Qatari government lawyers, interviewed by the newspaper, denied Qatar's involvement in this vast hacking operation.

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