[14][15] In 2018, Vidino was hired by Mario Brero, owner of a Swiss private intelligence agency, to share information on alleged Muslim Brotherhood operatives in Europe.
The intelligence firm, Alp Services, reportedly collected this information as part of a "smear campaign" for one of its clients, the government of the United Arab Emirates.
[17] An independent UK commission headed by former attorney general Dominic Grieve concluded in 2021 that new policies and the existing code of conduct should prevent similar problems from recurring.
[18] Meanwhile, based on a review of the evidence, the governments of Germany[19] and the Netherlands[20] stopped funding IRW, and the US issued a public condemnation of the organization's antisemitic remarks.
[23] His main subject is the Muslim Brotherhood, which he describes as "a modern day Trojan horse engaged in a sort of stealth subversion aimed at weakening Western society from within.
"[24] An investigative article appeared in The New Yorker in March 2023 about Vidino's connections to the private intelligence agency Alp Services, which had previously been contracted by the United Arab Emirates.
[27] According to the Austrian magazine Profil, Vidino also sits on the Abu Dhabi-based think tank Hedayah, which is mainly chaired by representatives of the ruling family.
[28] Der Spiegel published an investigation in July 2023, stating that Alp Services benefited from the fact that Vidino was able to establish contacts with quality media.
[34] Islamic scholar Reinhard Schulze, a professor at the university of Bern, has repeatedly criticized Vidino on Twitter: "In the controversy about the Muslim Brotherhood, much is reminiscent of radical conspiracy-theoretical submissions with which Freemasons, socialists, and communists were fought in the 19th century.
Lorenzo Vidino wraps them here in a pseudo-scientific garment in order to 'prove' that a small 'leadership clique' (30 people) is acting 'underground' to destabilize Central European society and to disseminate 'background content for assassins'.
[35] In April 2020, the Bridge Initiative of Georgetown University published a comprehensive fact sheet about Vidino, claiming that his "research promotes conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the United States".
[6] The initiative's associate director, Mobashra Tazamal, stated on Twitter that Vidino's work "has been used to justify the criminalization of Muslim civil society across Europe".
In response to criticism, Vidino stated in a September 2022 interview with Wiener Zeitung: "If my work is flawed and has caused you damage, why don't you sue me?
In addition, MJÖ cited a decision of the Higher Regional Court of Graz, in which it is stated that the "assessment in the Scholz/Heinisch expert opinion, which is based, among other things, on the Vidino study and afterthoughts, is inadequate as evidence".