Ex-French prime minister lavishly paid for Bahrain anti-Qatar mission, says report
Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls pocketed €30,000 ($31,759) for a three-day trip to Manama in July as part of a delegation of consultants tasked to defend Bahrain's interests in a legal dispute against Qatar, Mediapart revealed on Monday.
According to the French online newspaper, the trip was funded by Queen Capital International Limited, an offshore dummy corporation registered in Hong Kong. Participants were paid through a former lawyer for the Bahraini royal family, Philippe Feitussi, who leads a legal action in France in favour of the kingdom.
Although he had no specific expertise in the matter, the former socialist prime minister was mandated to explain to the Bahraini authorities the issues surrounding the opening in France of a preliminary investigation into alleged corruption of magistrates of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the context of a territorial dispute between Bahrain and Qatar.
In 2001, the ICJ rendered a decision that divided the territorial waters around the Hawar Islands, which mark the border between the two countries, in Qatar's favour.
Valls did not respond to Mediapart's requests for comment to explain why he accepted the mission.
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The investigative outlet asked if he did so for financial reasons, despite the state benefits granted to former heads of government in France. Valls racked up public expenses of around $150,000 in 2023, according to Politico.
Mediapart speculated whether his role was primarily to support the Gulf axis of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in a long-running dispute with Qatar, or was it chiefly aimed at undermining the International Court of Justice, whose referral of a case of genocide brought against Israel was denounced by Valls as "disgraceful" in a January newspaper column.
In September 2020, following the lead of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain signed an agreement to normalise its diplomatic relations with Israel, under the aegis of US President Donald Trump.
A 229,000 euro-trip
While Manama did not initially appeal the ICJ decision, which asserted Doha’s control over the North Field West offshore gas megafield, it began trying to challenge it through various means from 2020, following the blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain.
After a British law firm concluded there was little chance of overturning the ICJ judgment, the kingdom turned to Feitussi in 2021, who suggested that they deal with the case from the angle of the alleged corruption of some of the judges who issued the decision.
Mediapart reports that an investigation by a French intelligence firm headed by a former military man concluded in early 2022 that four international magistrates could have been bribed to deliver this judgment.
The 800-page report was written under the direction of Prince Nasser ben Hamed Al Khalifa, son of the Bahraini king.
Among the accused ICJ judges were Algerian former minister Mohammed Bedjaoui, who sat on the ICJ from 1982 to 2001 and chaired the court for three years.
Bahrain initially considered filing a complaint in France, where some of the funds from this alleged international corruption could have been laundered through real estate, but did not do so due to the warming of its relations with Qatar on the eve of the FIFA World Cup in late 2022, and then the official restoration of diplomatic relations in April 2023.
In the summer of 2022, Bahrain ended Feitussi's mission, but the lawyer continued to work on the case. He mandated a friend of his, centrist MP Philippe Latombe, to send a report to the National Financial Prosecutor's Office, prompting the opening of an investigation.
At the time, Feitussi was no longer paid by Bahrain but by Queen Capital International Limited. The lawyer refused to reveal the identity of its owners and refuted Mediapart’s suggestion that it could be a sockpuppet for Bahrain or another of Qatar’s competitor.
"They are sponsors, people who consider that international corruption is not good,” Feitussi told Mediapart.
The company is at the heart of the organisation of Valls’ trip in July. Made up of lawyers, a geopolitics researcher and the consulting director of a communications agency specialised in legal issues, the delegation’s goal was to convince the Bahraini authorities to participate in the judicial case against Qatar.
The fees related to the July trip - 229,000 euros according to Mediapart - were paid by Queen Capital International Limited to Feitussi, who then remunerated the participants.
Vall’s commitment against the 'problem of Islam'
Meanwhile, the French lawyer informed Bahrain of his rapprochement with another declared adversary of Qatar, businessman Tayeb Benabderrahmane.
The French-Algerian lobbyist was sentenced to death in absentia by the Qatari criminal court in May 2023 for alleged espionage offences, and was indicted in France in 2022 for “corruption” and “active influence peddling” in cases surrounding the Paris Saint-Germain football club (PSG), owned by the Qatar Sports Investments fund.
When asked by Mediapart if he had a financial interest in leading this case against Qatar, Feitussi replied: “Maybe. But that’s not the priority at all.
“For me, really, the most important thing is that the victim [Bahrain] can have a say in what’s happening today. If, in the end, I have to pay out of my own pocket, I’ll pay out of my own pocket,” he added.
On his LinkedIn account, the lawyer posted several messages sympathising with Israel during its war on Gaza, describing the Palestinian group Hamas as a terrorist organisation, and showing its commitment in the fight against antisemitism.
As regards Valls, his motivations remain unclear.
After another unsuccessful attempt to return to French politics during the 2022 legislative elections under the banner of President Emmanuel Macron's party, following his failure in the 2019 Barcelona municipal elections, where he is from, the former prime minister under Francois Hollande no longer holds any elective mandate.
Valls has presented himself as a strong defender of secularism in France, and led high-profile campaigns to combat the Islamic veil, the "problem of Islam, Muslims" in French society and "the discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood".
Last year, Mediapart revealed another campaign led against Qatar in France, this time via an influence network operating on behalf of the UAE and executed through a private intelligence company based in Geneva, Alp Services.
In an investigative series called Abu Dhabi Secrets, the outlet revealed that more than 1,000 people and 400 organisations in Europe, including more than 200 individuals and 120 organisations in France, had been listed by Alp Services as “Islamists” and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, often wrongly and outside any legal framework.
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