Message to INFODIO readers: investigative journalism, which is what this site does, takes lots of time. Visiting media looking for a quick run down on Venezuela's gargantuan corruption, have the decency to at least cite the source when plagiarising this site's content without attribution (exhibit Reuters here and here, exhibit Bloomberg here, exhibit OCCRP here). To all readers, do the right thing, the honest thing: support independent investigative journalism, help us expose rampant corruption. Note added 28/06/2021: impostors are using INFODIO's former editor's full name, and a fake email address (alek.boyd.arregui at gmail.com) to send copyright infringement claims / take down requests to web hosting companies (exhibit Hostgator). The attempt is yet another effort paid by corrupt thugs to erase information about their criminal activities. Infodio.com has no issues with other websites / journalists using / posting information published here, so long as the source is properly cited.
RaFa the hacker sent me a concerned email. He tells me he's a Buddhist now. Is he a Buddhist hacker? Or a hacker who happens to be a Buddhist? Well, let's hear from him:
On the back of my alert to Matt Cutts and Google's subsequent decision to eliminate bogus results from searches related to Venezuelan criminals, now Crowdflower, the microtasking crowdsourcing platform, has eliminated all astroturfing tasks created by Clean Perception, the "online reputation mana
[UPDATE 30.12.2013 and 03.01.2014] RaFa the hacker is getting creative again. He is using Crowdflower to scrub the reputation of Venezuelan criminals (birds of a feather...). Let me explain how this works.
In another hilarious chapter in the Derwick Associates saga (a company of twenty-somethings with no experience in the energy sector that received 12 power plant contracts for billions of dollars thanks to one of their school chums, who just-so-happens to be the son of the government minister assigning the contracts), the holding company they have in Spain has just changed its name. Now, the "powerful" American-sounding company that bought a €22.7 million hunting estate in Toledo and luxury apartments in Madrid, is to be called COMPAÑIA DE INVERSIONES AGRICOLAS TRIESTE SL.
Countless words have been printed in the last few days about Angela Merkel's reaction to the news that the US government bugged her phone, and President Obama having even been briefed about in 2010 and doing nothing to "halt the operation" by the NSA. In this post Wikileaks and Snowden era we live in, that ever so defining and most useful of politicians' treats -hypocrisy- no longer cuts mustard. For Merkel's "outrage" is just that: utter hypocrisy. To illustrate the point, I shall provide an example that may have escaped Frau Merkel's "public indignation" radar.
I got up this morning to the news that "I've got AIDS." It wasn't my doctor who gave me the bad news, no. It was the Derwick boys (Francisco D'Agostino, Francisco Convit, Pedro Trebbau, and Alejandro Betancourt), who in their boundless wisdom, continue to position the only tactic they have at their disposal, money, in order to deploy the only strategy they know to use when bribery fails: intimidation.
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