Carlos Ibáñez, from 'hacking' for Correa in Ecuador to help Bartomeu

"We are not Snowden," he shouted, in his defense. Carlos Ibáñez, founding partner of I3 Ventures, the company that has put FC Barcelona in check and, especially, its president, Josep Maria Bartomeu, said it with a certain sneer. It was in the only interview he has granted after knowing the scandal, in El Matí de Catalunya Ràdio . In her, like Sabina, he denied everything. Or almost everything. Apparently, with the same result.

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Indeed, Ibáñez, a native of Uruguay, resident in Barcelona, ​​an expert in Big Data and digital marketing, is not Edward Snowden, the technology consultant and former employee of the CIA that unveiled top secret documents. The entrepreneur has already been pointed out on different occasions for using the network with seemingly unorthodox techniques. The alleged interest of Barcelona to make up the image of Bartomeu even if it was damaging third parties through Facebook pages and with the promotion of fake profiles and fake news is not the first scandal that splashes Carlos Ibáñez. The one in Barcelona is just one more chapter in the history of irregular practices of Carlos Ibáñez and his various agencies.

Of all the companies of which he is the sole administrator, I3 Ventures is the only one that presented its annual accounts at the Madrid Registry. Of course, the last time he did it was 2017. However, there is no known economic information from Nicestream (the agency that signs the report on how to bother Victor Font, for example), or Eye Watch, or NSG Corp. three companies that appear in the LinkedIn profile of Ibáñez and which he is supposedly currently engaged in. It does not appear in the network of professional contacts, interestingly, I3 Ventures, although it is known that its fiscal domicile, in Madrid's Zurbano street, is the same as that of Nicestream. All these companies have the same main activity that Illuminati Lab had in its day, of which Ibáñez was also a founding partner with Gastón Douek, who registered the company in Argentina.

The Illuminati Lab website has not been updated since 2016, a few years after being involved in controversial businesses. Dedicated to “create intelligent, innovative and inspired strategies for governments and elections”, according to the description of her own site, she was the exclusive representative of the National Secretariat of Intelligence of Ecuador for the “demonstration, evaluation and contracting of the services provided by the Hacking Team company ”, an Italian technology company denounced by Wikileaks for selling Da Vinci spy software to multiple governments and companies.

enlarge photo Excerpt from the report of the call Operation Walkiria.

This was not the only labor relationship that Ibáñez had with the former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who allegedly received more than six million euros - he also presumed in his radio intervention to have advised José Mujica, president of Uruguay. Through his Eye Watch brand, he worked to hack internet pages that supported critical content with the Correa government, and was responsible for attacking the image of Galo Lara, the main opponent of the Ecuadorian leader. The great success of Eye Watch, presented in a report similar to those recently published with the Barça seal, was that of the so-called Operation Walkiria. Its objective was to block and drop the Bananaleaks page, a scourge for Correa, and its associated accounts. "The site was thrown," says the dossier in question.

Another Illuminati Lab report specifies how they work and what they do. Under the slogan "Social Media Intelligence" (term repeated in the report on Barcelona), the house presents its strategies to moderate information, influence and deactivate with bots , which would conflict with the statements of Ibáñez himself in Catalonia Ràdio, where he denied working with bots - fake or stolen profiles - or other "anomalous users". The aforementioned report explains that one of the services they offer is that of Citizen Intervention. It consists of the use of lemmings - multiple identities - “that allow to intervene in all types of social networks either by emulating citizen behaviors or issuing opinions on the topics”.

enlarge photo Excerpt from the Illuminati Lab brochure.

In his recent statements, Ibáñez denied that the report that leaked on how to damage the image of Victor Font, a prospective candidate for the presidency of Barcelona, ​​had left his company. Although the style of the dossier is very similar to those mentioned above, as is that of the monitoring carried out for Barça (an end that President Bartomeu did recognize) and the follow-up of the unofficial Facebook pages, of which Ibáñez said he was not the author, although he is the owner, at least, of one of them.

Multiply the turnover by 14

I3 Ventures was established in 2015, its sole administrator is Ibáñez and, according to the latest known annual accounts of the company, dating from 2017, its turnover increased by 14 between 2016 (104,886.84 euros) and 2017, the year in which he signed the first agreement with Barcelona and when it exceeded one million euros (1,513,437.70 euros, specifically). That course its benefits amounted to 292,313.21 euros; the previous year he closed it in negative.

The contractual relationship between Barcelona and I3 Ventures began in November 2017 and it was planned (until Bartomeu gave the order to break the contract) that his collaboration would continue until 2021 - as confirmed by the parties - at the rate of 198,000 euros per year, according to the Barca provider in the aforementioned interview this Thursday, which would have meant a disbursement of 990,000 euros for Barça.

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