The director of GW’s Program on Extremism was named in a lawsuit filed last week, alleging he was involved in a smear campaign coordinated by the United Arab Emirates that accused an American businessman of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the 87-page lawsuit filed in the D.C. District Court, Hazim Nada — the founder of Lord Energy, a Swiss-based oil-trading company — argued Lorenzo Vidino, the program’s director since its establishment in 2015, targeted the company and Nada as a contractor for Alp Services, a Swiss private intelligence firm. The lawsuit states that Vidino signed a contract with Alp in January 2018 to investigate European organizations in exchange for 3,000 euros and later spread disinformation about Lord Energy’s funding system, which led to the business’s bankruptcy in 2019.
“The enterprise relied on Vidino, and his academic credentials, to legitimize the false and misleading statements it had published to discredit and destroy its targets,” the lawsuit states.
Nada is suing for over $2.8 billion in treble damages and is represented by Alexandria-based law firm Clare Locke. Vidino and Nada’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment. A University spokesperson also did not return a request for comment.
The lawsuit states that Alp falsely published an investigative analysis that accused Nada and Lord Energy of being involved in a funding system for the Muslim Brotherhood. Nada’s father, Youssef, had joined the Muslim Brotherhood movement as a teenager in 1947 and later worked as a major donor and international emissary for the Muslim Brotherhood but never engaged in violence, according to a New Yorker report.
The lawsuit alleges that Alp conspired with and hired journalists and academics to assist in a smear campaign against Nada, which Vidino assisted as an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood. The lawsuit also states that Mario Brero, a co-founder of Alp who currently runs the firm, bought Vidino a $1,000 dinner and spoke to him about the alleged campaign in Geneva in January 2018.
Vidino later told The New Yorker that he thought the UAE was the “most realistic client” but couldn’t confirm if it was the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel or a different private entity in the United States. Vidino allegedly signed a contract in January 2018 to provide Alp with leads and rumors for the investigation and with the names of alleged members of “first tier” organizations in Europe, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also states that Wikipedia entries about Nada in French and English cite Vidino as an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood, in which his quotes claim that members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West “downplay” their ideological connections to the organization.
Vidino is an expert on Islamism in Europe and North America whose research for the past 20 years has focused on topics like the activities of Muslim Brotherhood-inspired organizations in the West, according to his GW faculty page.
Lord Energy declared bankruptcy in Switzerland in April 2019 after multiple banks had terminated their relationship with the company and Nada — a result of an alleged smear campaign run against the company that eventually forced Lord Energy entirely out of business.
“The enterprise used its network of co-conspirators to carry out what Alp routinely described as a ‘confidential offensive viral communication’ campaign to, in Alp’s words, ‘seriously damage, if not destroy, the reputation and viability’ of Hazim and his companies,” the lawsuit states.
