openDemocracy undercover
investigation reveals ‘explosive’ evidence of ‘extraordinary coordination’
between controversial Madrid campaign group and far-right parties across
Europe.
A controversial Madrid-based
campaign group, supported by American and Russian ultra-conservatives, is
working across Europe to drive voters towards far-right parties in next month’s
European Parliament elections and in Spain’s national elections this Sunday,
openDemocracy can reveal today.
Our findings have caused alarm
among lawmakers who fear that Trump-linked conservatives are working with
European allies to import a controversial US-style ‘Super PAC’ model of
political campaigning to Europe – opening the door to large amounts of ‘dark
money’ flowing unchecked into elections and referenda.
The Madrid-based campaign
group CitizenGo is best known for its online petitions against same-sex
marriage, sex
education and abortion – and
for driving buses across cities with slogans against LGBT rights and
“feminazis”.
But now openDemocracy can
reveal new evidence of “extraordinary coordination” between this group and
far-right parties across Europe – from Spain to Italy, Germany and Hungary.
In Spain, CitizenGo is
supporting the far-right party Vox that is expected to make big gains this
weekend, winning seats in the country’s parliament for the first time and
potentially forming part of the new government.
Speaking to our undercover
reporter posing as a potential donor, CitizenGo’s director described plans to
run attack ads against Vox’s political opponents, and talked about how to get
around campaign finance laws.
Meanwhile a senior Vox
official compared CitizenGo to a “Super PAC” in the US,
referring to the controversial groups that can spend unlimited sums influencing
elections in America – and which are known for aggressive, negative
campaigning.
openDemocracy can further
reveal today how CitizenGo has been supported by an experienced American
political fundraiser and tech consultant linked to the Trump campaign, the
Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, who boasted of being able to use
controversial technology to collect personal data about potential voters.
Former US Democratic Senator
Russ Feingold described our findings as “frightening” and called on European
leaders to act to protect the democratic process.
“Europe has an opportunity to
get ahead of this and not make the same mistakes that were made here in the
United States”, said Feingold, who worked alongside Republican senator John
McCain for reform of electoral finance in the US.
CitizenGo’s board also
includes a close business associate of the “Orthodox Oligarch” Konstantin
Malofeev – who has been targeted by USand European sanctions
for allegedly propping up the pro-Russian breakaway republic in eastern Ukraine
– and an Italian politician, Luca Volonte, currently on trial in Milan
facing corruption
charges.
European lawmakers have
described openDemocracy’s findings as “explosive” and have called for “urgent
action” to “maintain the integrity” of upcoming elections.
In a letter to the European
Commission’s transparency tsar Frans Timmermans, MPs, MEPs and Senators from
six European countries said these findings “merit urgent and high-level
investigation by the European Commission and relevant national authorities”.
“We have all seen how
democracy can easily be eroded if we remain complacent about the activities of
anti-democratic actors… [who oppose] European fundamental rights, European
values and liberal democracy”, they warned.
‘Make Spain Great Again’
The Spanish far-right party
Vox has pledged to build
walls around Spanish enclaves in North Africa, jail
Catalan independence leaders, loosen gun control
laws and “make
Spain great again”. The party also opposes “political
correctness”, marriage
equality for gay people and laws
against gender-based violence.
CitizenGo’s leader, Ignacio
Arsuaga, has publicly
supported Vox, as has the group’s Spanish language partner organisation,
HazteOir – which recently lost the
equivalent of charity status after campaigns the government said
“denigrate or devalue” LGBT people.
But our research reveals new
evidence of the close relationship between CitizenGo, HazteOir and Vox.
Describing Vox as “my
friends”, Arsuaga said they’ve met with its senior officials to share their
campaign plans and described how they ‘indirectly’ support the party.
Our undercover reporter
specifically asked Arsuaga how to get around Spanish campaign finance laws
rules – donating more to Vox than the legal limit – and about doing so
anonymously, which is against the law.
Arsuaga explained that there
are no such limits on donations to groups like CitizenGo, and “if you give
privately to a non-profit there is no need to disclose that”. He said CitizenGo
would not channel money to Vox itself but “you could give to any foundation
that doesn’t mind to give, to forward the money, to Vox... that would be a good
option”.
“This is something we haven’t
made public”, Arsuaga continued, “but, in Spain, we’re going to launch a
campaign before the general elections... where we are going to show bad things that
have been said” by the leaders of parties that Vox is running against, for
example “in favour of abortion or in favour of LGBT laws” – describing
since-released posters and adverts against candidates
from other parties.
“We’re never going to ask
people to vote for Vox... but the campaign is going to help Vox indirectly”
Ignacio Arsuaga, CitizenGo
The Vox official that Arsuaga
put our undercover reporter in touch with confirmed that supporting CitizenGo
could help the party, “indirectly”, describing them as independent but that “we
are actually currently totally aligned”.
He told our reporter that
while there is a limit on the size of individual donations to parties, “there
is not a limit on the number of donors, okay, it can be split among several
donors… and they only have to register [their first] name, last name and the
origin”.
“There are other ways of
making support”, he added, describing “a lack of regulation in terms of the
equivalent of Super PACs in the United States, those institutions or
organisations that give airtime or advertising in support of causes or
candidates or political parties. I understand that that is outside of the
limitations of the actual political parties which is very, very regulated”.
Super PACs don’t officially
exist in Europe but he said “there are movements to create those and I think
they are unregulated” and “Ignacio’s organisation, that’s kind of that”.
Financial scandals and links
to the ‘hard right’
Vox has been hit by several
financial scandals, including the
late 2018 supreme court condemnation of its then vice-president for
“accounting irregularities” in one of his companies, disqualifying him from
overseeing other accounts for three years.
It also received €800,000
in donations from an
extremist Iranian opposition group for its 2014 European elections
campaigns – and has been linked to a controversial
foundation that glorifies Francisco Franco, Spain’s former dictator.
Arsuaga also told our reporter
that Vox’s General Secretary Javier Ortega Smith, simultaneously
the lawyer leading Vox’s private prosecution of Catalan independence
supporters, “comes, I would say, from the hard right, like Falangists… Franco’s
movement – but nobody knows, it’s a kind of private thing”.
Neither Ortega Smith nor the
Vox party responded to openDemocracy’s requests for comment on Arsuaga’s claim.
“He comes, I would say, from
the hard right, like Falangists... Franco’s movement – but nobody knows, it’s a
kind of private thing”
Ignacio Arsuaga, CitizenGo
Responding to openDemocracy’s
request for comments before publication, Arsuaga said: “It is self-evident that
supporting HazteOir.org or CitizenGO means indirectly supporting the parties
that defend (in some way) the principles we defend”.
It is “public knowledge that
we work to influence and put pressure on political parties”, he said, saying
that this is done “by no means ‘behind the scenes’”. He also disputed the
characterisation of parties that CitizenGo aligns with as “far right”.
Powerful American and Russian
backers
CitizenGo was set up in 2013 –
the same year as Vox – as an ultra-conservative version of the progressive
campaign platforms Avaaz.org and MoveOn.org. It has run powerful campaigns
globally, including in Kenya where last year it helped get the reproductive
health charity Marie Stopes temporarily
banned from providing abortion services.
CitizenGo also has some very
powerful international backers and partners. As previously mentioned, Alexey
Komov, a close associate of the “Orthodox Oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev, and
Luca Volonte, the Italian politician currently on trial in Milan facing
corruption charges, both serve on the group’s board of trustees.
Bank statements from Volonte’s
Novae Terrae Foundation in Italy, seen by openDemocracy, show that it paid
CitizenGo €12,000 in 2014 – at the same time as the foundation was receiving
money from entities later identified as part of a ‘laundromat’
pumping illicit cash into Europe from Azerbaijan and Russia. There is no
evidence to suggest that the money paid to CitizenGo came from these illicit
sources.
Meanwhile, Arsuaga told our
undercover reporter that Patrick Slim, son of the Mexican oligarch Carlos Slim,
gave his group €40,000, which “for him is just a very small amount”, Arsuaga
noted – although it is close to the maximum individual donation to a political
party permitted under Spanish law (and four times election campaign limits).
It was not clear whether this
donation was for CitizenGo or HazteOir, neither of which are political parties.
At the time of publication, Patrick Slim had not replied to openDemocracy’s
request for comment.
Another CitizenGo board member
is Brian Brown, a prominent US anti-LGBT activist who leads the World
Congress of Families (WCF) network that recently
met in Italy, with deputy prime minister Matteo
Salvini from the far-right Lega party among its speakers.
Arsuaga told our reporter that
he met Brown at a WCF meeting in Madrid in 2012 and that CitizenGo gets advice
“every couple of months or so” from a “senior expert” in fundraising and
technology who is “paid by Brian Brown”.
This expert is Darian Rafie,
Brown’s partner at an American organisation called ActRight, which describes itself online as a
“clearinghouse for conservative action”.
Previously, CitizenGo has
presented itself in
the logo on its website as a “member of the ActRight family” and
openDemocracy understands that ActRight paid for a CitizenGo staff member in
2013, a claim that Rafie did not deny in emailed comments.
ActRight is currently encouraging people to “thank president
Trump for stopping transgender insanity in the military”. On Facebook, its recent posts
include those supporting Trump; those mocking the appearances of left-wing
women; and asking “How much do you think Barack Obama paid Harvard to admit his
pot-head daughter?”
ActRight’s Rafie is an
experienced political consultant in the US who has played key roles in a number
of companies that
have worked for the
Republican National Committee and the Republican party in Ohio and
Michigan; received
payments from a Super PAC supporting Texas Republican Ted Cruz (as
did ActRight in
2015); and worked with the
Tea Party group Think Freely Media.
Speaking to our undercover
reporter, Rafie said he “did a lot of fundraising politically with Trump”,
through political action committees (PACs) but also “directly with the
campaign… [and] directly with the party”, and that he expects one of his
companies to be working “in the majority of states” in the 2020 election campaigns.
‘Your phone is leaking
information’
“There is a lot of stuff to be
done with mobile phones and geo-fencing areas”, Rafie told our reporter. He
explained: “Say there’s a rally somewhere, one of these big Trump campaign
rallies. What we’ll do is we’ll draw a Polygon around that event and then we’ll
register all the phones that were there”.
“Then we follow those phones
home, then we know who they are, and what they do, and now I know what your
Netflix unique ID is, and I’ve got your Facebook unique ID, so then I can
communicate with you through a whole variety of ways”.
Rafie said “you can do that in
Europe” too, though “it’s a little more limited… because the privacy laws are
better, for the consumer”.
He said: “It’s actually really
scary, when you peek beneath the covers, and realise that this phone that
you’re carrying around with you is leaking everywhere all of your information”
which can be correlated with personal data “very quickly”. In the US, he
explained, “all of the data is routinely collated and correlated and available
for sale”.
“We follow those phones home.
Then we know who they are, and what they do, and now I know what your Netflix
unique ID is, and I’ve got your Facebook unique ID, so then I can communicate
with you through a whole variety of ways”.
Darian Rafie
Over email, Rafie clarified to
openDemocracy that this company uses “ad networks” as do “many political
campaigns and businesses in the United States… to delineate an area and
identify unique device IDs and their associated advertising profiles”.
“We should all be frightened
by the amount of data routinely collected, collated and sold by ad networks
(such as Google and Facebook)”, he added.
Friends across Europe
On stage at the World Congress
of Families meeting in Verona, Italy, in late March, CitizenGo’s Arsuaga urged
European and other international ultra-conservatives to pursue an indirect,
“less understood, practised path to power” that he summarised as: “By
controlling [politicians’] environment… you also control them”.
‘By controlling [politicians’]
environment… you also control them’
Ignacio Arsuaga, CitizenGo
Speaking to our undercover
reporter at this event, Arsuaga revealed that CitizenGo also has “a lot of
contact” with the Fidesz and Lega far-right parties in Hungary and Italy, along
with “some contact” with the far-right AfD in Germany.
Asked if he discussed his
group’s campaign strategies with these parties, Arsuaga told our undercover
reporter “yeah, yeah… we inform them about what we are going to do”.
He also offered to introduce
us to Lega party senator Simone Pillon and an AfD official believed to be
Maximilian Krah, who was photographed with Salvini at
the Verona event.
In Germany, CitizenGo’s events
have attracted Princess
Gloria von Thurn und Taxis – another World Congress of Families
speaker, patron of conservative Christian causes and a friend of Steve Bannon –
along with the AfD’s Benjamin
Nolte.
In Italy, CitizenGo was one of
the organisers of the WCF event in
Veronaalong with the ProVita anti-abortion campaign that has ties
to the neo-fascist party, Forza Nuova.
CitizenGo has also been
involved in training
Italian activists including via a four-day workshop in 2018 with the Leadership
Institute – a US conservative group that counts Vice President Mike Pence among
the alumni of its trainings in America.
openDemocracy contacted the
Lega, AfD and Fidesz parties but they did not respond to requests for comment
on their relationships with CitizenGo.
‘A loud and clear wake-up
call’
Lawmakers from across Europe
have expressed alarm at openDemocracy’s findings about CitizenGo and its
international networks.
German MEP Terry Reintke,
Greens/EFA spokesperson for gender equality and social policy in the European
Parliament, said: “It is shocking how close and deep-running the ties between
right-wing, nationalistic populists are – even spanning over the Atlantic.
Especially with the European elections ahead, this is extremely worrying”.
She added that this “needs to
be a loud and clear wake-up call… This is an attack on fundamental rights and
freedoms of all of us”.
British MEP Molly Scott Cato
called for “tough and immediate action... to protect the integrity of the
democratic process”. CitizenGo is an example, she added, of how “the extreme
right often… presents themselves as protectors of life, liberty and family” –
while “behind this thin veneer there so often lurks a sinister political
agenda”.
Scottish National Party MP
Alyn Smith reiterated his concern that “these [European] elections will face a
concerted effort to manipulate the outcome” and called for “more investigations,
particularly in the UK after the activities of the Leave campaigns, so
legislators can tackle these in the future”.
Petra Bayr, an MP from Austria
and Vice-President of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and
Reproductive Rights, expressed her concern about European groups “trying to
import a controversial US-style ‘Super PAC’ model of political campaigning to
Europe, which can allow large amounts of dark money to flow unregulated into
elections and referenda, often in support of extremist parties and financing
controversial, negative campaigning”.
Commenting on openDemocracy’s
findings, former Wisconsin Democratic senator Russ Feingold warned of a
“downward spiral effect on democracy”.
“There is a great irony in
this. [Far-right parties] are trying to appeal to ultra nationalist sentiments
but they are using tactics that are completely contrary to the sovereignty of
those countries. These are international actors, oligarchs and others who are
trying to control the political processes of these countries. Even if you are a
nationalist, one would think you would be a little bit concerned about that”,
Feingold said.
Speaking from Washington DC,
Adav Noti, a US election lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, also warned
that Super PACs have been “destructive” in the US, with “horrible effects” for
American democracy.
“The last eight years since
the invention of this Super PAC vehicle have seen a real sharp increase in the
extent to which our elections are dominated by a small number of ultra wealthy
individuals and corporations”, said Noti.
“A federal election in the US
is supposed to be decided by 150m voters and yet the policy preferences are
being determined by literally 20 people, 20 major donors”.
In emailed comments to
openDemocracy, CitizenGo’s Ignacio Arsuaga said his groups do report donors to
Spain’s Ministry of Interior and that “according to the current Data Protection
legislation, we cannot tell the press who is our donor”.
He said “all the donations we
have received are legal”, and that “the destination of our funds has always
been legal and public”.
Additional reporting by Peter
Geoghegan, Claudia Torrisi, Belen Lobos and Alexander Nabert.
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