Alwaght- A United Arab Emirates plan to attack Qatar's financial system and snatch the country's FIFA World Cup 2020 hosting rights has been revealed.
According to a report published by The Intercept website through the group Global Leaks, the contents of the plot are contained in a folder of an email account belonging to the UAE ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba.
The economic warfare involved an attack on Qatar’s currency using bond and derivatives manipulation.
The outline, prepared by Banque Havilland, a private Luxembourg-based bank owned by the family of controversial British financier David Rowland, laid out a scheme to drive down the value of Qatar’s bonds and increase the cost of insuring them, with the ultimate goal of creating a currency crisis that would drain the country’s cash reserves.
Rowland has long had close relationships with UAE leadership, particularly with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, known as MBZ.
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.
There is no conclusive evidence the plan has been initiated, nor that it will ever be launched.
On June 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar and imposed a blockade against it, accusing Doha of funding "terrorism". Qatar has vehemently rejected the allegations as "baseless".
On June 22, the group issued a 13-point list of demands, including the shutdown of Al Jazeera TV, limiting ties with Iran, and expelling Turkish troops stationed in the country as a prerequisite to lifting the blockade. Qatar rejected all the demands, denouncing them as attempts to infringe its sovereignty.
