Reputation cleaning companies like Eliminalia use legal threats and copyright notices to have material removed worldwide.
In a brilliant investigation by Peter Guest for Rest of The World he showed the level of this digital cleanup company, which he had already denounced by The Freedom Post on several occasions during 2021.
For example:
Sanctioned Joaquín Leal Jiménez and others linked to the regime hire company to clean up their reputation – By Raymond Azar
The problem is not that they have money: the problem is that it is ill-gotten. The problem is not that they are denounced: the problem is that they try to disappear the information from the web – By Laura De Rosa
This is part of some of the research carried out by members of the editorial group of this media.
However;
In February 2021, Qurium, an organization that provides secure web hosting services for human rights organizations and independent media, received a rambling message from someone whose email signature indicated that he was in the legal department of the European Commission.
Click here to read the original message
With a confusing legal lexicon the representative, «Raul Soto» demanded that Qurium take action on the articles to take them down from a Kenyan-based investigative journalism website it hosts, The Elephant.
The articles in question included an investigation into alleged corruption, but Raul Soto’s email was not about the allegations. Rather, he claimed that the piece had violated the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which governs the collection and storage of personal data in Europe. Wonderful move to get everything off the web.
Qurium staff had noticed that something was not right and suspicions began to be triggered. After an investigation it was exposed that the street address in Soto’s firm did not belong to the European Commission; rather, it was rented office space in Brussels.
Using a publicly available database, they found that complaints were submitted to search engines at about the same time, alleging that The Elephant article was plagiarised and requesting that the piece be removed and de-indexed from search engines, meaning it would not appear on the first pages of search engine results. Brilliant, isn’t it? Web cleanups have gone so far as to implement independent media intelligence, entity credential spoofing, and so on.
The question is, at what cost, and what level of corruption is exposed to get to this point?
Qurium traced the domain used in the email to a reputation management company called Eliminalia, registered in 2013 by a Spanish entrepreneur named Diego «Dídac» Sánchez and based in Barcelona and Kiev.
Eliminalia specializes in deleting information from the internet; its slogan is «We delete your past, we help you in your future» and it promises «100% confidentiality.”
Rest of the World had access to documents that show how the reputation management industry works. They reveal how Eliminalia and other similar companies can use copyright claims and false legal notices to remove and hide articles linking their clients to allegations of tax evasion, corruption and drug trafficking. The Elephant case may be one of thousands.
But beyond how far away it may seem to us so far, the point is that Eliminalia or similar companies have taken corrupt Venezuelans sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State off the web map, as also shown in this investigation by The Freedom Post:
Francisco D’Angostino also seeks to remove himself from the Web after being sanctioned – By Raymond Azar
The names of the files and the inclusion of company information, as well as contact details and references to their internal policies, suggest that the documents originated from Eliminalia. Along with names referred to as clients, the documents include URLs that were removed or de-indexed from search engines on their behalf.
Rest of World spoke to several individuals and media outlets that managed websites mentioned in the documents. They confirmed that they had been approached with complaints by Eliminalia employees or people directly linked to the company.
The ROW web portal noted that among the thousands of names listed as clients in the documents are the former foreign minister of the Dominican Republic, a person indicted in Argentina for involvement in a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme, and people accused of corruption around the world who apparently sought to delete compromising information from the internet.
In total, it is about 17,000 URL’s that the company appears to have focused on between 2015 and 2019. In at least one case, it is indicated that Eliminalia may have been outsourced by another reputation management company on behalf of a client. It is unclear whether the list includes all of the company’s clients, but it contains names of individuals and companies in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, showing the extent to which services of this type have become a mechanism for wealthy and powerful people to control information on the internet, «erasing their past» (complaints included) and misrepresenting the «right to be forgotten.»
Venezuelans accused of corruption and money laundering would be among the favorites, such as the cases mentioned above.
Magalis Camellón, head of Eliminalia’s legal department, said in an email that the company had «no contractual relationship» with any of the people named in this story and that «unfortunately, competitors perform improper actions (DMCA) on behalf of Eliminalia and in that way try to damage our company’s reputation.» The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, is a U.S. law designed to prevent online copyright theft that can be used to issue takedown requests. Camellon declined to provide further details. Petter Guest noted in his report.
Some of the people listed in the documents are individuals who apparently sought to have explicit videos removed from even pornographic websites. But the most prolific users of the service appear to be businessmen and politicians who sought to deal with critical articles. Such as Francisco D’Angostino for example, or other businessmen who have made millions of dollars in investments in the United States.
A 2021 Eliminalia contracting agreement, which was seen by Rest of World, shows that the company charged €2,500 ($2,800) for the removal or de-indexing of each link. In a 2016 interview, Sanchez said his firm charges some high-profile clients and businesses a premium fee of around $20,000-$30,000.
Apparently, documents show some clients interested in hundreds of articles and pages.
In February 2021 Eliminalia was also reported in Contra Poder 3.0.
Rest Of The World also indicated that among the names mentioned in the documentation is «Miguel Octavio Vargas Maldonado», in apparent reference to the former Foreign Minister of the Dominican Republic. His name appears alongside more than 500 links to news articles, blogs, social media posts and YouTube videos apparently intended to be removed or de-indexed.
Many are articles concerning questions about his political fundraising practices. They include allegations that Vargas had received donations from an individual who would later be convicted of drug trafficking. Some of the links remain active, while others now go to 404 error or «file not found» pages. Maldonado could not be contacted; emails sent to his political party bounced and his website is currently inactive. Maldonado has previously denied all allegations of wrongdoing while in office.
The 404 error is the code that indicates that the information disappeared from the web site
The documents also list an individual referred to as «Jose Antonio Gordo Valero,» who was apparently interested in several articles for removal or de-indexing concerning the collapse of OneCoin, a Bulgaria-based company that turned out to be an illicit pyramid scheme. OneCoin attracted investors by offering them access to a high-yielding cryptocurrency and reportedly raised $4 billion before being exposed as a fraud. The company’s founder, Ruja Ignatova, disappeared in 2017, but was charged in absentia with money laundering, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud in the United States.
An entrepreneur named Jose Gordo joined OneCoin in 2015 and has been named in an indictment over that company’s scam in Argentina.
The articles that appear next to Gordo’s name in the documents reviewed by Rest of World include references to his role in the company. Gordo did not respond to multiple requests for a response.
Another name on the documents is that of «Diego Adolfo Marynberg» who appears to be the same Marynberg connected with funding right-wing causes as well as efforts to push for settlements in Israel.
The reports also alleged that his company received preferential treatment in the acquisition of Argentine bonds valued at millions of dollars. More than 70 URL’s appear next to Marynberg’s name in the documents, which include pages from Israeli newspapers The Times of Israel and Haaretz, as well as Clarin, one of Argentina’s most important news sites.
Marynberg did not respond to a request for a reply, and a message sent to one of its funds, based in the Cayman Islands, also received no response.
Eliminalia or these other companies have not only dedicated themselves to the Venezuelan market. As evidenced not only by The Freedom Post but also by Rest Of The World, only wealthy individuals have access to the controversial cleaning service.
However, part of the investigation conducted by The Freedom Post has verified that after these scandals the company is also seeking to eliminate its bad reputation from the web through the Twitter platform, generating incoherent content with the company’s name and links to youtube videos to generate visits to the site and seek positioning so that the uncomfortable information disappears from the main Google search pages.
For example, we found a user identified as @eltelefonoazul who tweets very often content like this:
The generation of content with the searched name is key to its almost permanent «disappearance» from the web, only those who know how to search will find something.
The following graph provided by Adrian Gonzalez from «Cazadores de Fake News» clearly shows the movement of the account, making it clear that it is a bot account that operates 24/7 and automates 100% of its tweets with the HootSuite tool.
This is not the only Twitter bot account that is part of the operation.
The table below shows the tweets he has posted with the word Eliminalia, along with the number of times they were repeated:
In consequence of the above, the following graph shows all the tweets published that include the word Eliminalia
His tweets are not usually retweeted, replied to or quoted by other accounts, but the publication of «junk» (spam) tweets are intended to hide articles published on Twitter about the Eliminalia case.
The @eltelefonoazul account alone posted 452 tweets between January 31 and February 16 of the Rest of the World article was published on February 3:
Now, this same account, which is evidently part of the cleaning operators of the controversial company, also cleans the reputation of controversial characters such as Levin De Grazia, owner of Boca’s House Restaurants, who many have indirectly linked to Chavismo and who, according to ABC media, is involved in an immigration fraud that would have made him lose his green card (document that proves that you have legal authorization to live permanently in the United States).
Levin De Grazia’s name was replicated in hundreds of tweets, which shows a clear work of cleaning the web, however, the strange thing is that they use the same bot for other alleged customers.
The following is evidence of the possible cleanup:
Like the aforementioned businessman’s name there are dozens of other names, which The Freedom Post is taking the time to research each one of them today.
Going back to the preliminary information obtained by Rest of The World, the documents also include many links related to stories about Venezuela.
Among the names on the documents is that of Majed Khalid Majzoub, an influential «businessman’ with close ties to several governments (Iran being one of them) as well as to the regime of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Majzoub appeared alongside more than 180 URLs, mostly from independent media. Of the two URLs pointing to articles in Germany’s Der Spiegel, one now redirects to an error message; the other, which appears to refer to Venezuela-Colombia relations, directs to a story about Brexit. Majzoub could not be reached. Der Spiegel also did not respond to a request for a reply requested by Rest of The World.
Another media outlet attacked by Eliminalia is Infodio.com, a website known for extensive investigations by journalist Alek Boyd, who has been instrumental in the investigations against Alex Saab and Alejandro Betancourt.
Textual note:
«Boyd told Rest of World that on several occasions he has been the target of false claims under the DMCA and has received messages from advertising and public relations companies with threats of legal action. He told Rest of World that he has been contacted on at least two occasions by people using Eliminalia email addresses and identifying themselves as Eliminalia employees, with the intent to have him delete content.
Eliminalia’s presence in Venezuela has raised concerns among free speech organizations.
Freedom House’s 2017 Freedom on the Net report on Venezuela warned that Eliminalia had been involved in «cleaning up the reputations» of local politicians and businessmen, citing a report by Lisseth Boon of Runrun.es. (As noted above the actions taken by the Twitter account @EltelefonoAzul
Boyd said he communicated with social media companies, law enforcement and regulators to try to alert us to the practice but was unsuccessful. He admitted to some fatalism about the use of reputation management services by powerful people.”
But these are not the only media outlets that have warned about this practice, The Freedom Post’s Chief Editor Laura De Rosa also denounced the practice in 2021.
Francisco D’Angostino, brother-in-law of the Secretary General of Acción Democrática, Henry Ramos Allup, now sanctioned by the U.S. State Department, Joaquín Leal Jiménez, Alex Saab’s right-hand man, Carlos Gil Ramírez Álvarez, Jorge Echenagucia, Jorge Plaza Márquez, among others, have used this digital cleaning service.
So these companies like Eliminalia not only operate out of good will to «cover up» embarrassments, they have also served to clean up corrupt people not only in Venezuela, but also in other countries. It is true that we all have the right to be forgotten or to start from scratch, but as long as they do not get away with criminal activities.
This mechanism, which is evidently a gold mine for the operators, only helps the impunity of those who do not deserve it.
Eliminalia was founded in Spain by Diego Sanchez and is now part of Maidan Holding, a business group for Sanchez’s business interests, based in Kiev and Barcelona. They are also located in Colombia, as indicated on the website.
The tricky thing about this is that Sanchez, this young «entrepreneur» as he called himself in an interview with AnimalPolitico.com, Interesting, but at the same time delicate, facts are that Sanchez, a «young entrepreneur» as he called himself in an interview with AnimalPolitico.com, changed his original name from Diego Gimenez Sanchez to Didac Sanchez in October 2012, according to El Confidencial.
Sanchez was the protagonist of a pederasty scandal in May 2005 when she was residing in a center for minors called Casa de los Infantes del Raval, a popular neighborhood in Barcelona. He was allegedly sexually abused by a 45-year-old businessman, José María Hill Prados, who was denounced by the facility itself to the authorities. After a trial, he was sentenced in 2007 to 8 years for abuse offenses. He was ordered to stay away from the minor for 5 years and prohibited from any type of communication, reports El Confidencial.
But three years later, the story took an unexpected turn as Sánchez denied Hills Prados’ abuses before the Supreme Court, but the denial was rejected and the businessman completed his sentence. But the denial was rejected and the businessman completed his sentence. Simulation of a punishable act? El Confidencial
This information is also not easy to find on the web today.
Finally, Qurium’s investigation seems to indicate how Eliminalia is attempting to substantiate its DMCA complaints.
To support plagiarism claims against The Elephant, Qurium discovered that the article in question was copied and pasted from several different websites, all with domains that made them look like African media outlets. The duplicate articles were then assigned publication dates prior to the original. The websites were hosted on the servers of a company called World Intelligence Limited, based in Manchester, UK.
Companies House, the British registry of companies, names Sanchez as the sole owner of World Intelligence Limited.
The strategy is based on threats and making whistleblowers spend money to eliminate the information.
The clear thing about this practice is that with a good checkbook it is possible to change your past and your present on the web, helping to hide whatever it is. Ironic isn’t it?
This must be known.
