José María Olmo
Beatriz Parera
The Civil Guard accredits the key role of the multinational.
The Civil Guard accuses T-Systems, with 31.9% of its capital in the hands of the German State, of playing a decisive role in the 1-O and in the creation of the structures of independent Catalonia
Neither the investigations opened against the Catalan Executive on account of the referendum nor the warnings that the Judiciary sent directly to T-Systems to remind it that some adjudications could go beyond the statutory framework prevented the German company from continuing to lend decisive support to the sovereignty road map. Researchers have reached this conclusion after analyzing the abundant documentation on the 'procés' found in September 2017 at the headquarters of T-Systems in Spain, located on Sancho de Avila Street in Barcelona. Emails and confidential reports would prove that, at least since 2014, the company knew the plans of the secessionist parties and articulated internal protocols to cooperate intensively with them without being discovered.
T-Systems devised an internal strategy in 2015 to position itself consciously on the side of the independence parties and collaborate in the plans to break with the rest of Spain. (Click here to access the full report)
According to the investigations of the Armed Institute, at least a dozen employees of T-Systems would have participated in the development of the infrastructure of the Catalan Republic. The agents highlight the role of Rosa María Rodríguez Curto, the director in charge of relations with the Generalitat, who was detained in the Anubis operation along with a dozen other high-ranking officials of the regional administration. On her working table was found a 20-page report printed on both sides entitled "Generalitat de Catalunya -Account Plan- Analysis of political ideals and institutional positioning"; in this document, in addition to examining the proposals of the parties that defended unilateral independence and dissecting their respective strategies to achieve it, they fixed the position that T-Systems should adopt in a conflict that this process would necessarily generate with the State.
The "Action Plan" to help the Government
The report, which probably would have been compiled in 2015, makes clear on which side of the line T-Systems was placed. Near the end of the document, under a heading called "Plan of Action", the German multinational specified that it was committed to creating a 'White Paper' that would summarize the contribution of the company to the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) of the Generalitat and condensed how they could continue with this collaboration in the future. Only between 2012 and 2016, the governments of Artur Mas granted contracts to T-Systems for 310 million euros, becoming one of the main customers of the subsidiary in Spain of the historic German telephone company, participated in a more than considerable way by the German state (it controls 14.48% of its capital directly and another 17.41% through the public bank KfW).
In order not to lose this enormous source of income or even increase it, the T-Systems report concluded that the firm had to activate a "shock plan detailing actions" to achieve the "materialization of the concrete bet for the process of national constitution" and the "change of model", an euphemism for the definitive rupture of Catalonia with the rest of Spain. The company considered that this scenario was a great opportunity to opt for strategic projects linked to independence, such as the development of the "Public Treasury", "Social Security", the "Catalan DNI", the "preparation of Data Bases for an operational electoral system" and the creation of an "own [telephone] operator (Euskaltel type)", specified the report in another chapter. These were not the only contracts that interested the multinational. Other emails reveal that T-Systems also participated in the development of a police 'software' so that the Mossos d'Esquadra could monitor compliance with the laws of the new State and a second intelligence 'software' more oriented to Cesicat, an agency of security that was to be the embryo of the Catalan CNI.
"Intentionality to participate in the 'procés'"
"From the analysis of these documents," the Civil Guard notes in its report, "it can be concluded that T-Systems had clear, precise and unambiguous knowledge of the political project of the Catalan autonomous government since, at least, the year 2015, having carried out a detailed study of the road map that it had planned to follow, the State Structures that it wanted to create and the ICT needs that all this would entail. Once this study was done, it defined the strategy that, as an ICT company, it should try just to continue to be the reference of the Generalitat in this process, with the volume of business that all this entailed". "There is no doubt," the researchers add, "of the intentionality of T-Systems to participate in the 'procés', not only since that precise moment, but also previously it would have done so, given that, otherwise, it is supposed that it would not obtain any credibility before the corresponding organisms of the Generalitat if previously it had not made works in that very sense".
One of those previous works that made T-Systems the technological head of the Government was the creation of the registry of Catalans abroad for the first independence referendum of 2014, promoted by Artur Mas, an episode that is also being investigated now by the Civil Guard. Specifically, the German firm was commissioned to launch this application because the Government wanted to facilitate the vote to citizens who lived outside the community.
The report of the Civil Guard reveals that T-Systems collaborated in the development of the registration of Catalans abroad, on the 1-O website itself and on the official page of the National Pact for the Referendum, in the image above, which was made public in January 2017. (Click here to access the full report)
Researchers have now found indications that this program, which then did cost 527,685 euros, was updated several times by T-Systems throughout 2017 to make it the registry of Catalans abroad who wanted to vote on 1-O. The changes involved an additional cost of 94,253 euros, according to the report of the Armed Institute, which has just been sent to the Court of Instruction number 13 in Barcelona, where the investigations against the political leaders of the Generalitat of second level have been centralized. They face the crimes of embezzlement, disobedience and sedition.
Collaboration until the last moment
T-Systems decided to collaborate with the Generalitat to develop the State’s own competences, such as the National Identity Card, Social Security, the Tax Agency and, even, databases to set up a completely autonomous electoral system. (Click here to access the document in full size)
The Civil Guard intervened during the investigation dozens of telephone conversations that demonstrate the enormous degree of affinity that existed until the last moment between the high-ranking officers of the Generalitat responsible for the consultation and the directors of T-Systems, even though the company already knew that the tasks they were implementing were illegal. Only in relation to the 1-O, in addition to the census of Catalans abroad, the subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom was also responsible for developing the page of the National Pact for the Referendum - which served to launch the convocation definitively in January 2017- and made changes in the official website of the consultation just a few days before it was held, when the State Security Forces had already begun to mobilize to try to overthrow it.
After the publication in the first weeks of 2017 of news that alerted about Puigdemont's plans to hold a consultation not agreed upon and start up the Treasury, the general director of T-Systems in Spain, José Manuel Desco, wrote an email to Rosa María Rodríguez to ask for a "detailed report" on all the work they were doing for the Catalan tax authorities. It is unknown if the manager even sent the report to his superior, but the company maintained its collaboration with the 'procés' during the following months as if nothing had happened. A large group of T-Systems employees continued to focus on these projects, throwing in hundreds of extra hours and working even on weekends, as the company's internal communications clearly reveal.
The one that did not continue was Desco, despite the fact that since 2015 he had also shown a complete harmony with the objectives set by the Generalitat. An e-mail from July of that year proves that he was already informed of the infrastructures that the Government of Artur Mas wanted to set up. However, in May 2017, Desco was relieved of the general management of the company and provisionally replaced by the then financial director, Osmar Polo.
Secret meeting in Barcelona
Few weeks after that change in the top of T-Systems in Spain, the general director of this division of Deutsche Telekom, Reinhard Clemens, traveled from Germany to Barcelona to meet secretly with Puigdemont himself, as revealed to El Confidencial sources close to the inquiries. Polo also attended that meeting.
An internal email from T-Systems shows that the general director of the company was already aware in July 2015 that they were collaborating in the creation of the main state structures of independent Catalonia. (Click here to see the document in full size)
There is no data on the content of the meeting, but the facts indicate that it must have been very fruitful. In July 2017, Polo was directly warned by the Judicial Police that, "in the event that the company T-Systems received some contract from the Generalitat for the realization of any application or computer project that was related to the preparation of the illegal referendum on October 1, it had the obligation to communicate immediately". But the German multinational never paralyzed nor warned of anything. Not even after the referendum.
The high-rank officer is still in the company
T-Systems continues being one of the main suppliers of the Generalitat. And, paradoxically, its commitment to the independence of Catalonia has not prevented it from retaining dozens of contracts in the rest of Spain, the territory from which the firm sought to separate. Polo, already consolidated as CEO of T-Systems Iberia, said in an interview in March 2018 that the ‘procés’ has damaged “its image, not its business". "There have been many falsehoods and there have been many misrepresentations, and that has hurt us a lot; there have been clients asking us what we have done," he lamented in statements collected by 'Cinco Días'. "We have never collaborated with the 1-O", he dared to say then.
This Friday, however, the company declined to comment on El Confidencial's information. "T-Systems does not comment on legal actions or investigations so as not to interfere in ongoing processes. The company reiterates that each and every one of its actions and those of its directors are guided by compliance with current regulations and the monitoring of the practices of Good Corporate Governance and Transparency". Rosa María Rodríguez Curto continues to work in the company, despite the accusations she faces. She holds the position of vice president of sales and forms part of the company's Management Committee of the company.
https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2019-03-03/t-systems-gigante-aleman-traiciono-espana-puigdemont-independencia-cataluna_1858194/
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