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A Spanish company provided the CIA with key data for the arrest and possible extradition of Assange

2023-03-28T10:39:35.885Z


Emails from the owner of UCE Global, SL show that he sold information on the defense of the activist to US espionage


David Morales, director and owner of UCE Global, SL.Uce Global

"Be [sic] attentive tomorrow to see what you can get... and that everything works."

Michelle Wallemacq, head of operations of the Spanish company UCE Global, SL wrote this message on December 20, 2017 to two of the technicians of this company, who were in charge of the security of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where refugee Julian lived. Assange.

For the next day, Rommy Vallejo, the head of Senain, Ecuador's secret service, had announced his visit.

He came to receive confidential information from the founder of Wikileaks that could change the future of the cyberactivist.

Vallejo had hired the services of this small company from Jerez de la Frontera to guarantee the safety of Ecuadorian diplomatic personnel in London, but its employees devoted themselves wholeheartedly to spying on him and recording his meeting with Assange.

The head of the Ecuadorian secret service was unaware that the diplomatic legation had hidden microphones even in the women's bathroom, that the workers of UCE Global, SL knew in advance the purpose of their visit and that David Morales, the owner of the security company, he was sending to the CIA all the information he obtained about meetings between Assange and his lawyers.

The government of Lenin Moreno, then president of Ecuador, and the cyberactivist's Spanish lawyers had designed a secret plan weeks before to remove Assange from the embassy, ​​grant him Ecuadorian nationality and a diplomatic passport.

Only six people knew about the project.

During his meeting with Vallejo, recorded on video and audio by the cameras of the Spanish company, Assange, his lawyer Stella Morris and the consul Fidel Narváez confessed to him the great secret: the scheduled departure date was only four days later, on the 25th of December.

The Australian would leave in a diplomatic car belonging to the ambassador to go through the Eurotunnel, predictably, to Switzerland or another destination in continental Europe.

“It's too late... I've put it in a shared Dropbox (computer storage space) because it's so heavy.

Someone with experience in the sound field can make it listen to be understood... The ecu (Vallejo) is understood quite well, but the others (Assange and Morris) speak very loosely, ”wrote a few hours after the meeting one of the two technicians to David Morales.

He had urgently requested "everything you can get from that day at the embassy."

The delivery of the material that morning to "American friends" with whom Morales had had dealings for months had a dizzying effect.

That same day 22, the United States issued the arrest warrant against Assange to the United Kingdom, so the plan had to be aborted.

Two years later Assange was expelled from the embassy and in June 2022 the British government ordered his extradition.

The activist remains imprisoned today in a London jail pending the resources of his lawyers.

The United States claims him for 18 alleged crimes that raise the sentences to 178 years in prison.

Days before Vallejo's visit, two disturbing events had occurred thousands of kilometers away.

At the Quito airport, an advisor to the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry who was keeping information about Assange's departure was assaulted by several hooded men when he was returning from the United States on an official trip.

They only stole his computer.

In Madrid, during the early hours of the 17th, several assailants wearing balaclavas entered the office of the lawyers Baltasar Garzón and Aitor Martínez in search of the computer server.

The lawyers had just returned from London from visiting the Wikileaks founder to prepare for his departure.

Despite the multiple footprints left by the visitors, the Police today affirm that they lack information.

Julian Assange, during one of his appearances before the press from one of the balconies of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The friends of the USA

David Morales' relationship with his enigmatic American clients was not forged in a day.

The former soldier from the Special Operations Unit of the Navy created his company inspired by Blackwater, the private company of mercenaries who fought in Iraq.

When he was in charge of the security of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, he already had as a client the American billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021 at the age of 87, and his casino company Las Vegas Sands.

He was personally in charge of giving security to the gambling tycoon while he enjoyed his vacation aboard his yacht in the Mediterranean.

And in the security team of Adelson, a donor to the Republican Party and a friend of former President Donald Trump, worked a former member of the CIA.

The key year of this collaboration between a tiny security agency from Jerez de la Frontera and the most powerful espionage service on the planet was 2017. Emails and chats between Morales and his workers, to which EL PAÍS has had access, are a reflection how the twinning came to be.

Eleven months before providing the key information to abort Assange's departure from the embassy, ​​Morales wrote to one of his technicians from The Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, owned by Adelson: "Do we have status reports on computer systems and networks from the embassy?

I need an inventory of systems and equipment, telephone numbers of the guest (Assange), number of networks”.

And he warned his employee in a chat: “I want you to be alert because according to what they tell me, they may be controlling us,

On May 12 of the same year, the day after another of his trips to Las Vegas, the ex-soldier wrote to his worker stationed at the Ecuadorian Embassy: “I am on a subject in which I foresee that they are going to start monitoring us (it is he meant that they were going to examine their abilities and way of working)… What can we do if an agency with stars and stripes wants to see us?”

And the employee responded: "I already imagined that I would go that way."

On June 12, en route to Washington, Morales asked his trusted man to remotely activate the “hotel” portal, a code name for the London embassy.

The UCE Global, SL technicians had installed an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server and a web portal at the Jerez de la Frontera headquarters where they collected all the information obtained from espionage.

A kind of

Big Brother

where the profiles by nationality of the visitors received by the founder of Wikileaks, lawyers, diplomats, doctors, journalists, as well as mobile phones whose IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity), unique identifier of each mobile, were kept. they were photographed.

This server was given

streaming access

(live broadcast) to an enigmatic American client named X.

cameras with microphones

On that trip to the US, already installed again in his room at the Las Vegas Sands, Morales allegedly showed his "friends in the US" the information he had, as can be seen from the chats and emails sent to his employees.

Weeks later, on July 23 and 24, he attended a work meeting in Miami and asked for "a budget for the cameras" with microphones that would be placed in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London before Christmas of that same year.

"Send it to me so that when I meet I can deliver it," he asked his technician, adding a winking Donald Trump emoticon.

At that time, the

ex-marine

had already confessed to his trusted employees that "he had gone over to the dark side", that they "worked in the Champions League" and that through the new American client they would get new contracts.

On September 8, he explained it this way in two other emails: “In relation to the actions of the Hotel (the embassy) I would like to be able to raise the possibility of offering our information reception and analysis capabilities to the American client….

We must have a very well structured presentation of the information that we will provide, ensuring that it is attractive and easy to interpret”.

The response from the UCE Global, SL worker made it clear which was the fastest path.

“A fairly good source of information can be the mic (microphones), all the cameras have a hidden one and these will be located in the common areas;

the guest (Assange) has three rooms, two are quite frequented by him and his team… we would have all the audio taken except in one room”.

On September 21, Morales asked his “musketeers” (workers) to be careful with the information they transmitted because he suspected that Senain, the Ecuadorian secret service that had hired them to provide security for the embassy, ​​was investigating them.

"I would like my location to be handled with reservation, especially my trips to the USA."

And he asked them for data on the embassy's Wi-Fi, the composition of the walls that surround the guest's room (Assange), photos of the interior and the furniture, and all possible data on the main visitors, especially on his lawyers.

White noise and maximum interest

The white noise machine that Assange activated every time he entered the meeting room to prevent anyone from recording him forced the team to install a microphone at the base of a fire extinguisher.

Stickers were also placed in the corners of the windows to avoid the vibrations of the device and to be able to record from the outside with laser microphones.

“Do you have photos from outside the embassy of the stickers?

David has asked for it”, asked one employee to another.

"What's up, man.

There was almost always the press and when I could go out it was at night, ”he replied.

When everything was ready to record the Wikileaks founder and his visitors 24 hours a day, Morales was somewhat more explicit in his messages to his trusted workers.

“I assure the contact with the USA... Of course all this is super confidential.

I need you to make me a report from that meeting... I need to know all the data... In a week I will have to go to Washington... I know that it is of maximum interest and that the USA wants to do it”.

Morales was arrested by the Police in September 2019, weeks after EL PAÍS revealed audios, videos and reports from UCE Global, SL in which they demonstrated the espionage to which Assange and his lawyers were subjected when they were preparing their defense.

The evidence led to a complaint in the National Court presented by the Australian, and the ex-soldier is being investigated for crimes against privacy, violation of the secrecy of attorney-client communications, misappropriation, bribery and money laundering.

Several former workers have become protected witnesses in the case and magistrate Santiago Pedraz has asked the US Intelligence Committee to ask the CIA about spying on the founder of Wikileaks.

Investigation@elpais

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Source: elparis

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