Espionage before the World Cup award?: Blatter and Zwanziger are outraged about Qatar

The criticism of Qatar's World Cup ambitions is great even before the tournament is awarded.

Espionage before the World Cup award?: Blatter and Zwanziger are outraged about Qatar

The criticism of Qatar's World Cup ambitions is great even before the tournament is awarded. In order to counteract this, Qatar is said to have commissioned espionage. Apparently, the then FIFA boss Sepp Blatter and DFB President Theo Zwanziger were among the targets. So both are angry.

Former FIFA President Joseph Blatter was "surprised" when asked about renewed reports of an alleged espionage affair involving World Cup hosts Qatar and the world football association. "It's worrying that you're doing that," said the 86-year-old in an interview with the media company SFR, which reported extensively on a secret project controlled from Qatar.

The emirate is accused of having orchestrated espionage actions against FIFA officials via a US company in the course of the awarding of the final round in December 2010 and afterwards. At the request of the German Press Agency, Qatar did not comment on this.

Blatter was FIFA President until 2015, and according to the report, the former President of the German Football Association, Theo Zwanziger, who was a member of the FIFA Executive Committee from 2011 to 2015, was also affected. According to research by the AP news agency, the 77-year-old already had access to corresponding reports at the end of February 2022. He should therefore be influenced because of his critical attitude to World Cup hosts Qatar.

"It feels like brainwashing that you want to do with these means," Zwanziger told SFR. "I'm aware of that, which is why I consider such an approach not only indecent, but criminal." The "spying" is "breaking a taboo, that's not appropriate when people love the social function of this sport so much. Spying is not part of it".

According to AP, the US federal agency FBI is investigating a former employee of the CIA, whose company is said to have carried out the espionage operations for Qatar. According to the news agency, the lawyer for the ex-CIA man rejects the allegations.

On request, the Swiss public prosecutor's office rejected the allegations that they had acted too passively in this case. It went on to say: "In the event that in the context of the proceedings before the public prosecutor's office new evidence or facts become known which speak for a person's criminal liability and do not result from previous files, the public prosecutor's office can, based on the Code of Criminal Procedure, order the retrial of a legally ended procedure."