Vox, the party that presents itself as the maximum defender of national interests, has in recent months encouraged a series of hoaxes that undermine the image in Latin America of one of the main Spanish technology companies, the company Indra, within a campaign aimed at cast suspicions of fraud on the Colombian elections, which culminate this Sunday with the celebration of the second round.
La Gaceta, the website of the Disenso Foundation, which is chaired by Santiago Abascal and is financed with public funds, has published a dozen articles in which doubts are raised about the cleanliness of the Colombian electoral process, which can give victory to the leftist candidate Gustavo Pietro, based on the participation of the Spanish company in the vote count. The foundation of Vox has given rise to the alleged existence of a “suspicious meeting” between Gustavo Petro and the president of Indra, Marc Murtra, during the visit that the Colombian candidate made to Madrid last February. The hoax was launched by former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana, who has participated in several public Vox events and has a close relationship with the owners of one of the Spanish’s rival companies, according to industry sources.
In May, Disenso assured that two Indra officials (the general director of Public Administrations and Electoral Solutions, Juan Pedro Rodríguez-Veiga, and the then CEO, Cristina Ruiz Ortega) had attended, during Petro’s visit to Madrid, a act “to promote the campaign of the narco-communist candidate.” In fact, the directors of the technology company participated in a colloquium with a dozen Spanish businessmen organized by the Euroamerica Foundation, chaired by the former socialist leader Ramón Jáuregui, in which Petro explained his economic plans to managers of firms such as Telefónica, Repsol, Banco Santander or BBVA, among others.
The fact that the meeting between the leftist candidate and the president of Indra did not exist did not prevent Vox from taking this hoax to Congress. Six deputies, led by the group’s general secretary, Macarena Olona, asked the government “the reasons for the meeting, which was not finally held, planned between the terrorist and candidate of the extreme left for the presidential elections” in Colombia and the president of Spanish technology. To justify their interest in the agenda of the head of a private company, the Vox deputies argue that 18.7% of Indra’s shares are in the hands of SEPI, so “the Spanish State must exercise the functions of control as shareholder of the company”, and that the appointment of its president, Marc Murtra, “was promoted by the former Minister of Health Salvador Illa”.
Already when the award to the Spanish company took place, around last Christmas, La Gaceta assured that Indra had received a contract of “around six billion euros” (sic) by hand, despite the fact that the Spanish company , he assured, had been “accused of participating with its computer systems in the electoral fraud that frustrated the re-election of President Donald Trump.” In reality, there was no fraud in the American elections nor did Indra have any contract in them, as was already in charge of clarifying when Trump’s lawyer, the former mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani, launched this hoax for the first time. In another article on the Vox website, the expression “fraud with the Spain brand” is used and it is suggested that “Indra could be collaborating with Chavismo to do with Petro in Colombia, the same thing they did with Chávez in Venezuela.”
In reality, all the logistics necessary to organize the Colombian elections, a $300 million contract, was awarded to a joint venture called Disproel, headed by the Colombian firm Thomas Greg & Sons and with the participation of Spanish companies such as Telefonica and Prosegur. Indra’s role is limited to processing, tabulating and disseminating the provisional results and supplying the computer program with which the National Electoral Commission processes the final count. Both contracts add up to 12 million dollars.
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Due to technical errors, in the provisional count of the Senate elections on March 13, almost 390,000 fewer votes were recorded than those counted in the final count of the ballots, but the error did not benefit Petro’s party, rather it harmed him. In all the elections held in Latin America in which the left has won, Vox has denounced an alleged fraud, even when its local ally democratically accepted defeat, as in Chile, but this time its hoaxes directly attack the reputation of a Spanish company .
Indra has collaborated in some 450 electoral processes in more than 40 countries in the last two decades, without any judge having ever questioned its work, according to company sources, who did not want to rule on the Colombian case. In Spain, it has dealt with all the electoral processes held in recent years, including the elections in Castilla y León on February 14, in which Vox obtained its best historical result, and those next Sunday in Andalusia.
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