Elies Campo Cid, the editor of the technical report that revealed the espionage of 65 Catalan politicians and pro-independence activists through the Pegasus computer program, is being investigated at the National Court for the Democratic Tsunami, as EL PERIÓDICO has learned. The judicial process was opened in 2019 to track, among other issues, the creation of this pro-independence platform and who its leaders were, as well as its financing and internal structure. The legal proceedings are still under summary secret. The same Field was spied on with Pegasus, just like Pau Escrich Garcia Y Jordi Baylina, which are also being investigated in the same cause. The judge instructing her never requested the collaboration of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) in these specific investigations, although it did authorize the installation of a ‘software’ (which one is not specified).
Campo is a 39-year-old telecommunications engineer from Barcelona who has undertaken multiple technological projects and has developed a good part of his career in Silicon Valley, the area of California where the most important technology companies and training centers in the world are grouped. He is a renowned independentist member of the research platform Citizen Lab -a research group from the University of Toronto– whose figure has been key in the publication of what is known as ‘CatalanGate’.
According to the article published in ‘The New Yorker’, the Pegasus espionage investigation began in July 2020, when the MEP Jordi Sole (ERC) suspected that his mobile had been infected. The politician went to the Catalan engineer to examine his device and he confirmed that he had been attacked, which put other pro-independence leaders on alert. In the end, he discovered that some 65 politicians, lawyers and activists they had been spied on through this method. Campo himself was spied on with Pegasus.
The investigation focuses on Campo’s alleged participation in a computer project to create virtual currency
Digital financial structure
The investigation of the National Court on the Field is based on his alleged participation, together with other people, in the development of a package of computer programs with multiple functionalities, among which is a project that would allow the creation of a digital financial structure and, even , the implementation of a own currency in a future independent Catalonia. One possibility was the creation of a Catalan cryptocurrency. This system would also offer from an application for identity credentials, effective communications, digital voting and electronic purse. The researchers suspect, however, that the main intention was to create a digital currency. I would also be linked to this project Pau Escorich.
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The investigations intend to corroborate the steps that the creators of this computer package took in their day and, in particular, the contacts that they maintained in search of investors (they came to have a meeting with financial entities) outside of Spain, such as in France, although trips to Brussels have also been detected. This newspaper has not been able to find out the meetings that were held in the Belgian capital. Another line of investigation is the contacts that this group of computer scientists had with the Generalitat.
The creation of a cryptocurrency has been one of the goals of the independence movement. “No… if he explained it to me… Puigdemont… when I was in Waterloo [residencia en Bélgica del expresidente de la Generalitat] … the last time he was explaining to me everything they were doing based on cryptocurrency… that there was that boy whose name I can’t remember now”. This is an excerpt from a conversation intercepted on the telephone of Víctor Terradellas, a friend and man close to Puigdemont, investigated in Barcelona by the ‘Voloh case’ of alleged diversion of public funds and financing of the ‘procés’. His interlocutor was the businessman and former CDC official David Madialso a trusted man of the ‘expresident’.