Mario Brero

Mario Brero (born March 29, 1946) is an Italian private detective heading five companies registered in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1989 he founded Alp Services SA, a private investigation business, focusing on banks, law firms and wealthy clients with "advice, support, strategic guidance, diplomatic intermediation and organisation in crisis management and image reputation" and with "national and international investigations and inquiries, notably commercial and financial, in combating money laundering, counterfeiting, parallel markets, economic and/or computer crime; surveillance and protection of individuals and companies, crisis and risk management, asset searches, due diligence, auditing.

Presented by the press as "detective^[2]" or even "spy^[3]", he became notorious through revelations about the cases his companies had handled and his controversial or even illegal methods. After his methods became public and he was sentenced by a French court in 2014, Alp services focused on reputation management by spreading negative information for his clients from the former Soviet Union, VIPs from small African states, and most notably the UAE, such that Le Monde called it a "destabilization and surveillance company".

In 2021, his firm was hacked and the results published in 2023 as Abu Dhabi Secrets, how Alp Services was contracted by the UAE government to spy on citizens of 18 countries in Europe and beyond. Alp Services sent the names of more than 1000 individuals and 400 organizations in 18 European countries to the UAE intelligence services, labelling them as part of the Muslim Brotherhood network. In 2021, Brero was also convicted of coercion.