Repercussions continue to reverberate across Europe following a bombshell investigation revealing how companies linked to the UAE’s ruling Al Nahyan family illegally benefited from European Union agricultural subsidies — with new data now exposing the full scale of the scheme.
According to findings exclusively reviewed by dzwatch, firms connected to the Al Nahyan family and the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Fund received more than €71 million in EU subsidies between 2019 and 2024, in exchange for exploiting vast agricultural lands across Romania, Spain, and Italy.
The Al Nahyan family, whose fortune exceeds $320 billion — largely derived from oil and gas revenues — appears to have systematically siphoned funds from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, which allocates approximately $64 billion annually to support European farmers and rural communities, representing nearly one-third of the entire EU budget.
Investigators cross-referenced data from thousands of subsidy beneficiaries, uncovering a pattern where wealthy foreign investors exploit loopholes designed to protect small European farmers.
