http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...cretively-lobbied-Middle-East-paymasters.html
Leaked documents obtained by this newspaper show that the UAE's rulers pursued their goals by signing a six-year, £60,000-a-month contract with London political lobbying firm Quiller Consultants, part-owned by Lord Chadlington, the Conservative branch chairman in Cameron's constituency of Witney, Oxfordshire.
The contract states the job of Quiller was 'to promote and achieve the foreign policy objectives of the UAE', adding: 'All the activities as part of this engagement will be carried out in strict confidence.'
Crucially, emails reveal that when a key member of the Quiller team met an influential journalist and passed him a dossier of 'research' that he wanted him to use, he told him this secret briefing had nothing to do with the UAE paymasters, saying they knew nothing about it. Yet immediately afterwards he told colleagues and paymasters in London and the Gulf about the briefing, promising there would be many more.
This denial was a possible breach of lobbying standards and something that Quiller now says it abhors. But its then Gulf employers were keenly aware of the possible damage if the operation became public. In the words of one senior UAE official, it risked creating 'the appearance that we are meddling in 'UK domestic affairs'.
Leaked documents obtained by this newspaper show that the UAE's rulers pursued their goals by signing a six-year, £60,000-a-month contract with London political lobbying firm Quiller Consultants, part-owned by Lord Chadlington, the Conservative branch chairman in Cameron's constituency of Witney, Oxfordshire.
The contract states the job of Quiller was 'to promote and achieve the foreign policy objectives of the UAE', adding: 'All the activities as part of this engagement will be carried out in strict confidence.'
Crucially, emails reveal that when a key member of the Quiller team met an influential journalist and passed him a dossier of 'research' that he wanted him to use, he told him this secret briefing had nothing to do with the UAE paymasters, saying they knew nothing about it. Yet immediately afterwards he told colleagues and paymasters in London and the Gulf about the briefing, promising there would be many more.
This denial was a possible breach of lobbying standards and something that Quiller now says it abhors. But its then Gulf employers were keenly aware of the possible damage if the operation became public. In the words of one senior UAE official, it risked creating 'the appearance that we are meddling in 'UK domestic affairs'.
