UK Ambassador Pays Qatar Charity First-Time Visit

Qatari media has report­ed on what was described as the first offi­cial vis­it of British Ambas­sador Jonathan Wilks to Qatar Char­i­ty (QC). Accord­ing to the Gulf Times report, Wilks describes the vis­it as follows:

Octo­ber 13, 2020 I thor­ough­ly enjoyed my first vis­it to Qatar Char­i­ty. I was impressed with Qatar Charity’s wide range of activ­i­ties across the world and their use of tech­nol­o­gy to mon­i­tor and con­trol income and expen­di­ture… I look for­ward to build­ing on this first vis­it in the years to come.

Although QC is osten­si­bly an inde­pen­dent char­i­ty, a book by two French jour­nal­ists refers to QC as the “reli­gious soft pow­er of Doha.”

In 2015, Qatari media report­ed that Qatar Char­i­ty (QC) had launched its Ghaith (Rain) Ini­tia­tive to “serve Islam­ic projects world­wide” and that the project oper­ates in more than 50 coun­tries “through the estab­lish­ment of Islam­ic cen­tres that spread the Islam­ic sci­ences, stud­ies, and cul­ture in the West­ern coun­tries.” The report said that the ini­tia­tive cov­ered places such as France, Ger­many, Den­mark, Swe­den, Nor­way, Ire­land, Britain, Italy, Spain, Bel­gium, Poland, Switzer­land, US, Cana­da, Nether­lands, Aus­tralia, Ukraine, Lux­em­bourg, Brazil, Koso­vo, Bosnia, Alba­nia, and Hun­gary. The book by the French jour­nal­ists refers to hun­dreds of let­ters between QC and its ben­e­fi­cia­ries, most­ly asso­ci­a­tions close to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In 2016, the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch report­ed that QC was a major fun­der of the Ligue des Musul­mans de Bel­gique, the main Mus­lim Broth­er­hood nation­al group in Belgium.

Accord­ing to Gulf media, Qatar Char­i­ty opened a branch in Lon­don in June 2014, attend­ed by its chair­man, CEO, and the Qatari ambas­sador to the UK and oth­ers. Qatar Char­i­ty UK (QCUK) ‘s open­ing was said to come from the need for direct super­vi­sion of the projects in Britain and Europe. In 2015, QCUK changed its name to Nec­tar Trust and said it has agreed to diver­si­fy its trustees, now claim­ing to be inde­pen­dent of Qatar Char­i­ty (QC). How­ev­er, UK cor­po­rate records iden­ti­fy one of its cur­rent trustees as Saleh Mohammed Al Mar­ri, a Qatari nation­al res­i­dent in Qatar, and like­ly the same indi­vid­ual referred to in a Qatari media report as an advi­sor to the CEO QC. Anoth­er Nec­tar Trust trustee is Mohammed Abdul­rah­man Dab­wan Saif, whose LinkedIn resume says was the form Media and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er for QC.

QCUK was a major fun­der of a UK char­i­ty based in Sheffield called the Emaan Trust, which con­struct­ed the Sheffield Grand Mosque in Sheffield, intend­ed to become a large, mul­ti-func­tion­al Islam­ic Cen­ter in the city. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by the UK Dai­ly Tele­graph, based on an unpub­lished report authored by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) Senior Edi­tor, Emaan Trust had among its trustees senior fig­ures con­nect­ed to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood such as Ahmed Al-Rawi, as well as two Kuwaiti offi­cials with a his­to­ry of mak­ing anti-Semit­ic remarks. Our Senior Edi­tor also gave detailed writ­ten evi­dence to the UK Parliament’s For­eign Affairs Select Com­mit­tee on Qatar Char­i­ty (QC) and Qatar Char­i­ty UK (QCUK) in fund­ing projects across Europe, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Sheffield project.