Ex-French PM Takes €30,000 for Secret Mission Supporting Bahrain Over Qatar

On Novem­ber 19, 2024, the Mid­dle East Eye report­ed that Manuel Valls, for­mer French Prime Min­is­ter, received sub­stan­tial pay­ment for a brief con­sult­ing trip sup­port­ing Bahrain’s legal dis­pute with Qatar. The arti­cle begins:

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. 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.

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Key Points:

1. Valls par­tic­i­pat­ed in the mis­sion despite lack­ing exper­tise, focus­ing on the inves­ti­ga­tion of alleged ICJ judge cor­rup­tion in the Qatar-Bahrain dispute.
2. The mis­sion was fund­ed through off­shore com­pa­ny Queen Cap­i­tal Inter­na­tion­al Lim­it­ed, with total trip costs reach­ing €229,000.
3. Pay­ment came while Valls already received sig­nif­i­cant state ben­e­fits, rais­ing ques­tions about his motivations.
4. The case relates to a long-run­ning ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­pute over Hawar Islands and off­shore gas fields between Qatar and Bahrain.