“Files show how Eliminalia worked for scammers, spyware companies, torturers, convicted criminals, corrupt politicians, and others in the global underworld to hide information of public interest”.– Forbidden Stories |
The company persecutes the media and journalists and even manipulates the results that appear on the first page of Google with various strategies that it sells for thousands of dollars to clients around the world with a past they prefer to hide.
It is said that if something is published on the web, it exists forever. But the truth is a bit more complicated.
Daniel Sánchez, a Mexican investigative journalist, realized this a few years ago when in August 2018 he began receiving text messages and calls asking him to delete an article he had published. They claimed to be lawyers.
The article in question, published on Página 66 , was an investigation into how the video surveillance company Interconecta, which had been hired by the governor of the state of Campeche, in Mexico, had been linked to cases of corruption and tax fraud.
Years later, Sánchez received an email from a supposed marketing expert who called himself Humberto Herrera Rincón Gallardo, who said that the investigation violated a European data law called GDPR and asked him to remove references to Grupo Altavista and its founder Ricardo Orrantia. When a month passed and the note was not removed, Gallardo returned, this time with a copyright infringement claim.
Gallardo filed a claim with Digital Ocean, the provider of Página 66, alleging that Sánchez had illegally copied his content. To this end, it linked to a third-party site that had published a copy of Sánchez's article, but with a falsified earlier publication date and a false author: Humberto Herrera Rincón Gallardo, a six-month investigation coordinated by the consortium reveals. Forbidden Stories, in which 30 European media outlets participated and which focused on disinformation campaigns.
Thus, Sánchez was forced to delete his article.
As Forbidden Stories details, this campaign was the work of Eliminalia, a Spanish firm hired by Grupo Altavista that is in charge of managing reputation and offering content removal services to private clients, to remove dozens of articles. Gallardo denies any relationship with this company and says that his name was used without his knowledge or consent.
Orrantia hired Eliminalia and paid more than 12,000 euros in four installments to obtain their services and eliminate, among other things, Sánchez's article.
Hundreds of journalists and bloggers around the world had their work deleted, modified or hidden from the internet ...
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