Court records confirm: Behind Julian Assange’s surveillance was the security team of US billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Rafael Lutz for the online newspaper INFOsperber

A campaign has been going on for years against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has used the WikiLeaks   disclosure platform to uncover a number of crimes committed by the United States and other countries. For example, the “Collateral Murder” video, which revealed in 2010 how US forces targeted the murder of journalists during the Iraq war and caused a sensation worldwide. WikiLeaks founder, who is currently in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London, faces 175     years in prison in the United States.

EXCLUSIVE: How the CIA in London brought Assange under control (part 1)

Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint against the Spanish security company UC Global in Madrid. UC Global had bugged rooms at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and given the CIA access. Meanwhile, the Spanish judiciary is conducting an investigation. In a three-part sequence, Infosperber provides information on the content of the criminal complaint and on notarized statements from protected witnesses. Infosperber will report on the UC GLobal statement as soon as it becomes available. A UC Global lawyer denied to NDR that UC Global was making audio recordings within the embassy and was working with the CIA. For natural and legal persons, the presumption of innocence applies until a final judgment.

The brazen methods with which several US governments have been working against Assange for almost a decade are slowly rising to the surface. Last summer, the Spanish newspaper    «El País»   reported extensively on the Spanish security company Undercover (UC) Global, which Assange had spied on at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The founder of WikiLeaks fled there in 2012 to avoid extradition to the USA. Instead of protecting Assange, UC Global shared sensitive information about Assange and his team with US intelligence agencies. The United States has been on the shooting list since  2010 . In April 2017, the change of president in Ecuador from Rafael Correa to Lenín Moreno in the USA was accommodated. For the first time since 1917  they accused a publicist and publisher of violating the Spy Act

Assange’s lawyers filed a lawsuit last summer against David Morales, the founder and CEO of UC Global. He violated the privacy of the Australian citizen and abused the publicist’s legal and client privileges. Money laundering and bribery are also among the allegations. The National Court in Madrid has been investigating this since last autumn. Judge José de la Mata Amaya issued a European investigative order and asked the British judiciary for legal assistance. Big Swiss media like the Tages-Anzeiger or the NZZ (Neue Zurcher Zietung)did not inform about it.

Both the criminal complaint of the Assange lawyer and statements by protected witnesses from the court files are available to Infosperber and are linked at the end of this article for everyone to access. This shows who the backers of the surveillance affair were and what methods were used to spy on Assange. Spanish security firm UC Global has been commissioned by the security team of US multimillionaire Sheldon Adelson and the CIA, according to court records.

Republican Party Donor

Adelson is known as one of the Republican Party’s largest funders and the owner of the Las Vegas Sands group. According to the Forbes list of the richest people, his wealth is estimated at around 31 billion. Adelson owns casinos all over the world – including Las Vegas, Singapore and Macau. He is also an advocate of a pro-Israeli US foreign policy. At the time of Barack Obama, he was already lobbying to stop the signing of the Iranian nuclear deal. He also suggested using nuclear weapons against Iran.

Today, the multi-billionaire regrets serving as a young man for the US Army, not the Israeli. His personal security agency was headed by Zohar Lahav, an Israeli citizen who had previously been Adelson’s personal bodyguard and served as vice president of protection for Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands company. He will play a role in the Assange affair.

UC Global founded David Morales. The private military company Blackwater served as his model, wrote  «El País»  His UC Global already had an order at the Ecuadorian embassy in London when Assange took refuge there in 2012. Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador until 2017, had commissioned him to ensure the safety of his daughters at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. According to the court documents, the specific order was given by the Ecuadorian secret service SENAIN (Servicio Nacional de Inteligencia de Ecuador). The latter paid UC Global for the service.

However, in the same embassy Assange was no longer concerned with protecting him, but with monitoring and spying on him for the United States. UC Global revealed the most intimate details     of the WikiLeaks founder to the Americans. Morales also fooled the Ecuadorian government, which had long been unaware of the game the CEO of UC Global was playing. The court records indicate that there was a partnership between UC Global and Adelson’s security team.

Las Vegas Sands and the CIA

Hoping to get lucrative orders, Morales traveled to a security fair in Las Vegas in 2015. Back at the headquarters of his company in Jerez de Frontera, Spain, he announced to his employees that from now on they would play “in the first division”. “The Americans will get us contracts all over the world,” Morales assured his employees. When the employees wanted to know what he meant by this, he said that from now on he would work with the “dark side”. Which was a reference to the secret services. This was said by a protected witness notarized in court.

Morales had just secured his first job in Las Vegas. From then on, his UC Global was to guard the “Queen Miri” in the Mediterranean, Sheldon Adelson’s luxury yacht. The strange thing about the security contract with Adelson was that he already had a security team for his yacht, which guarded him and his family at all times. Morales met the Adelson bodyguard at the time, Zohar Lahav, in Las Vegas. It was Lahav who personally recruited Morales and routinely managed the relationship between the Spanish security contractor and Las Vegas Sands.

Zohar Lahav, former Sheldon Adelson bodyguard, confirms the Las Vegas Sands Group’s collaboration with David Morales. (Source: Lawsuit)

Lahav then worked directly under the global security director at Las Vegas Sands, Brian Nagel This was closely intertwined with the world of secret services. Nagel was previously a former director of U.S. intelligence and a cyber security expert. After successfully working with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, he received an official award from the CIA. According to the court documents, the Adelson security team was an ideal intermediary between UC Global and the CIA. It also played an important role in transferring the complex surveillance tasks to Morales UC Global.

According to the  «Guardian» Las Vegas Sands and the US secret services had previously maintained links with one another. Adelson’s casino in Macau is said to serve as a facade for CIA operations against China. The Guardian quotes a “highly confidential” report from 2010 by an unknown private investigator who investigated the activities of the US secret services in Macau. The Guardian has published the report. It says:

“A reliable source has reported that central government officials believe Las Vegas has allowed Sands CIA and FBI agents to operate from its facilities. These agents apparently “monitor mainland government officials” who play in the casinos. ”

According to Chinese officials, US agents tried to lure members of the Chinese government there so that they could win them over to work with the US government. Ron Reese, media spokesman for Las Vegas Sands, described the report as an “idea for a film script” and spoke of a “conspiracy theory”. Regardless of the authenticity of the report, court documents and evidence now show actual collaboration between Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands and US intelligence agencies, namely in the Julian Assange case. And this contains all the elements of a blockbuster spy thriller.

Read in the second part:

In 2017, the CIA launched a comprehensive espionage operation against Assange. Even the ladies’ room is bugged.

Translated from German by Lulith Van