The leak of 50,000 documents from a Spanish company dedicated to “erase the past” of its clients on the internet reveals a plot of dark maneuvers that affects those accused of drug trafficking, espionage, corruption or fraud, including 400 Latin American citizens and companies.
Based on your description of your activities, Eliminalia looks for negative information in articles, blogs or social networks to later manage its deletion. The company defends itself on concepts such as the right to be forgotten (used by people who ask to remove references to their crimes when they already pay for them) to deploy a modus operandi that is repeated
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It first sends requests to article authors, sometimes from accounts with fake names or pretending to be feature institutions. If they reject them, they go for the servers. When that doesn’t work either, they manage “de-indexing” – a strategy that involves tricking Google into hiding search terms from final results – or advance lawsuits for alleged violations of Copyright. This way, Hundreds of journalists and bloggers around the world had their work deleted, modified or hidden.
Between 2015 and 2021 Eliminalia worked for more than 1,500 clients in 50 countriesincluding Hernán Taricco Lavin, a doctor who paid $5,900 to avoid references to his management of a torture center during the Chilean dictatorship, and Mexican trade unionist Pedro Haces Barba, who shelled out $110,000 after being exposed in 300 articles for having signed contracts with governors arrested for corruption.
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In Argentina, the most notable case is that of Hernan Gabriel Westmanna computer businessman accused during the macrista management of having laundered money for the Sinaloa Cartel, charges that were dismissed two years later when no evidence was found. Westmann told the washington postone of the newspapers involved in the leak, that the accusation had been revenge by that government for having done business with that of his predecessor, Cristina Fernández.
The businessman assured that modify persuade Argentine media to remove some of the articles that they acknowledged the suspicions, but that he turned to Eliminalia -which would have charged him 15 thousand euros- to help him delete reports from the foreign press. Since then, he has appeared in unknown media outlets where he appears as an authority on issues such as the application of philosophy in everyday life, the rules of American football and even the temperament of Chihuahuas. The success was partial. When typing his name into Google, the results show a mixture of the old evidence with the new references… but it is also remembered that he is one of the powerful in the world determined to rewrite the past.
JL
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