The parliamentary groups of Junts per Catalunya in the Congress of Deputies and in the Senate have registered on Thursday a battery of questions to the central government about the Israeli company that claims to be behind the cyberattack that affected various portals of the Generalitat on the occasion of the consultation of November 9, 2014.
The post-convergene formation also plans to ask the European Commission in the European Parliament about this matter, since the tentacles of the Israeli businessman Tal Hanan, general director of the security and defense firm DemoManInternational Ltd, not only reach Catalonia, according to the investigations published yesterday Wednesday by the Forbbiden Stories journalistic consortium.
The company owned by Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli deputy commander who operates under the pseudonym Jorge, sells his services to intelligence and government agencies in various countries. In fact, according to the investigation revealed yesterday by the media consortium, in which El País participates, the businessman has participated in campaigns of disinformation and manipulation of electoral processes on more than 30 occasions and has ties to Cambridge Analytica. In the information revealed yesterday, it was reported that Hanan's firm had provided services to the State Security Forces and Bodies.
In addition to the questions, Junts also requests the appearance of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez and that of the ministers Félix Bolaños (Presidency) and Fernando Grande-Marlaska (Interior). With these parliamentary initiatives, JxCat intends to "demonstrate that the Government is behind the cyberattacks against Catalonia and the massive propagation of fake news that had the independence movement as its objective."
In his letter, Junts asks the Government if Hanan or his company has ever been hired by the Executive or its agencies, if cyberattacks have been carried out by the Administration or campaigns to propagate fake news have been launched or how he assesses the use of all these types of actions.
The Government of the Generalitat, as detailed yesterday by the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, who has cybersecurity powers in her portfolio since the Executive was restructured due to the rupture of the coalition with the post-convergents, is studying what legal and legal actions can be carry out about it. For his part, President Pere Aragonès called for "transparency" and for the facts to be clarified, while pointing to the State, just like Junts, although he did so in a veiled manner. JxCat, on the other hand, openly points out that the State "is the main suspect" and gives the use of Pegasus as an example.
