He identified among the computer scientists Elías Campo, a member of the ‘think tank’ that uncovered the alleged espionage with Pegasus
MADRID, 22 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Civil Guard pointed to the former president of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont as the person ultimately responsible for the development in 2020 of VOCDONI, an application for mobile phones that allows “mass voting” to be carried out, as part of the ‘roadmap’ to advance in “achieving of the so-called digital republic”, according to the summary of the secret investigation carried out by the National High Court on the ‘Catalan CNI’, to which Europa Press has had access.
In a report dated September 11, 2020, the Civil Guard informed the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 6, Manuel García Castellón, of the existence of a group dedicated to the development of an ‘app’ designed to “carry out voting using a system of digital identities, avoiding censorship and blockages, which protects the anonymity of the participants”.
According to this report, the computer application could not only “be articulated and promoted to implement digital elections of different types”, including “a massive vote with the formal guarantees of any plebiscitary process”, but also has other intrinsic functionalities such as the creation of a Catalan coin”.
La Meritorious is based on a presentation given by one of those investigated, Xavier Vives, during Mobile Week 2020 to differentiate between the main computer scientists –Vives, Pau Escrich, Joan Arus, Ferrán Reyes, Jordi Moraleda and Jordi Piñana– and “an undetermined number of external collaborators”, including Elías Campo, a member of Citizen Lab, the ‘think tank’ that uncovered the alleged espionage of Catalan activists and politicians with Pegasus.
The first version of the ‘app’ has been available since April 2020 and since then it would have experienced “successive updates” by this “highly qualified” group that the Armed Institute predicts expensive to maintain. The “first donation” would have been in April 2018, but the researchers warn that “the sources of funding are unknown.”
The report describes a swarm of companies constituted by computer scientists themselves in Estonia with which between 2018 and 2020 they would have invoiced close to 170,000 euros, something that the Civil Guard believes outside of all “commercial logic” because they were “unknown emerging companies”.
“The only reasonable explanation is that the third party to whom said companies would invoice and who pays them for said services was the one who commissioned the VOCDONI application”, affirms the Armed Institute.
In this regard, he mentions “a series of trips made to Brussels, the place of residence of Carles Puigdemont and some of his closest collaborators”, by these computer scientists turned entrepreneurs that would have taken place in April 2019.
For the researchers, it can “infer that the reason for the presence of computer scientists in the Belgian city could have been to proceed with the presentation of the aforementioned project, as well as the request for authorization for its public dissemination by the former president of the Generalitat” .
To this is added that in the files found in the terminals of one of those investigated, Jordi Baylina, ANC and Omniun Cultural appeared as “key partners” of the project, as well as “international institutions such as the Republic of Estonia”.
At this point, he explains that “the choice of Estonia as the country to host the commercial companies related to the development of VOCDONI is not arbitrary”, since “it is a country of reference in the digital field” and, as such, “in the that the hypothetical digital Catalan republic is inspired”, “one of the previous steps before the impossibility of an effective territorial control”.
