Countries, which once relied on their intelligence services to monitor foreign governments, increasingly are turning to PR firms and lobbyists to do their spying and information-gathering, according to a 64-page report called "Spin Doctors to the Autocrats: How European PR Firms Whitewash Repressive Regimes."
Released by Brussels-based Corporate Europe Observatory, the study of "image-laundering" also covers the diplomatic/intelligence outsourcing that goes on in Washington.
Prominent American firms such as Qorvis (Equatorial Guinea, Saudi Arabia, China), Patton Boggs (Georgia), APCO Worldwide (Azerbaijan), Levick (Nigeria), Racepoint Group (Rwanda), BGR (Kazakhstan, Bangladesh), Mercury PA (Uganda), Glover Park Group (Egyptian strongman General Sisi) and Ketchum (Russia) are fingered in the CEO report.
The Observatory believes "representing authoritarian regimes, and governments that are responsible for war crimes or serious human rights abuses as clients sits at complete odds with the various codes of conduct and corporate social responsibility discourse that many PR firms and lobbyists have signed up to."
Such representation, in the Observatory's view, is "ethical tunnel vision."
The report, which the Observatory believes covers only the "tip of a larger iceberg," is at http://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/20150120_spindoctors_mr.pdf.
Missy Edwards Strategies represents Shein Technology Group, the Los Angeles arm of the embattled Singapore-based “instant fashion” retailer.
Carlsbad, a north San Diego County city of 115K people, is looking for a firm to provide government relations and Sacramento lobbying services.
Gordon Sondland, who was US ambassador to the European Union under Donald Trump, has registered as a representative of Ukraine’s cabinet and ministers.
The Daschle Group is representing Santa Monica-based Stand with Hong Kong Action, an advocacy group that fights to end Chinese repression in Hong Kong.
McKinsey & Co. has reached out to Republican shop Harbinger Strategies to educate policymakers about the activities of the embattled management consultancy.
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