{"id":28522,"date":"2019-01-10T06:22:41","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T06:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28522"},"modified":"2019-01-10T06:22:41","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T06:22:41","slug":"qatar-lobbyists-paid-4m-by-mysterious-pr-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28522","title":{"rendered":"Qatar lobbyists \u2018paid $4m by mysterious PR firm\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1433176\/middle-east\" readability=\"60\">\n<p>\nLONDON: A US lobbyist in 2017 received nearly $4 million from a PR firm with apparent links to the Qatari government, in what one analyst said was an ongoing attempt by Doha to curry favor in Washington.\u00a0<br \/>Stonington Strategies, which is run by a well-known pro-Qatar lobbyist, received two payments for $1.95 million in late 2017 from a company called Blue Fort Public Relations, according to a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filing in the US.<br \/>Over the course of the six-month contract, Stonington Strategies \u201cmade senior level introductions, arranged trips, and fostered dialogue between American and Qatari companies,\u201d the filing \u2014 seen by Arab News \u2014 shows. The document lists 15 US business executives consulted as part of the deal.<br \/>The agreement was signed by Nick Muzin, and involved sub-payments totaling $2.1 million to a company called Lexington Strategies, which is run by fellow lobbyist Joey Allaham.<br \/>The two men had previously attracted attention for their \u201cunconventional\u201d lobbying in the US on behalf of Doha, Mother Jones magazine reported.<br \/>There would be \u201cno reason\u201d for Muzin to register the six-month contract under the FARA legislation unless he believed that the state of Qatar could be considered a beneficiary of the lobbying work, the magazine noted.\u00a0<br \/>While lobbying is an acceptably activity, one analyst said that Qatar has often used \u201cillegitimate\u201d means in its attempts to win favor globally.<br \/>The latest lobbying attempts follow accusations made by several of Doha\u2019s Arabian Gulf neighbors, which claim that Qatar funds terror and extremist groups globally.\u00a0<br \/>\u201cQatar has been using many vehicles over the past 20 years to lobby for its own causes and those of its allies, mostly \u2026 extremists,\u201d said Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of Cornerstone Global, a management consultancy focused on the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cQatar uses both its own established media channels as well as influencing through various means, often illegitimate (and) breaking local laws in countries it operates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cQatar is known to have used illegal hacking as well as propagating fake news to undermine whom it perceives as risks to its activities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON: A US lobbyist in 2017 received nearly $4 million from a PR firm with apparent links to the Qatari government, in what one analyst said was an ongoing attempt by Doha to curry favor in Washington.\u00a0Stonington Strategies, which is run by a well-known pro-Qatar lobbyist, received two payments for $1.95 million in late 2017&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":28523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}