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When it comes to online records of past lobbying work, Eva Kaili’s sister Mantalena wants a clean slate.
Eva, the now-former European Parliament vice president arrested in December on corruption allegations, had been a regular presence at events organized by her younger sister. Mantalena’s Greek nonprofit MADE Group had developed a network of outfits and projects closely aligned with tech-savvy Eva’s work in Parliament. MADE Group competed for and won EU tenders, once receiving €105,172 out of a pilot project Eva Kaili had pushed in Parliament.
In Brussels, Mantalena was known as the executive director of ELONtech, an “observatory” on technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain, whose events were sometimes held in the European Parliament and featured Eva as a speaker. Following the eruption of the Qatargate scandal late last year, ELONtech scrambled to make itself inconspicuous, removing all references to both Kailis from its website and telling its unpaid advisers it was “obliged to restrain its operation” due to “unforseen [sic] and turbulent conditions,” according to a December 14, 2022 email seen by POLITICO.
Traces of ELONtech’s activities in Brussels, however, survive on LobbyFacts.eu, a website preserving data from the EU’s Transparency Register, which keeps tabs on lobbying in the bloc — and Mantalena Kaili has recently asked LobbyFacts.eu to wipe all information about the outfit from the website.
“I hereby request the deletion of the data found under the name ELONTECH-the European Law Observatory on New Technologies, of which I am the co-founder,” Mantalena wrote in a December 30 email to LobbyFacts.eu, seen by POLITICO. “These are falsly [sic] entered in this platform, it is not a legal entity, nor serves as a lobbying organisation.”
Vicky Cann, one of the campaigners managing LobbyFacts.eu, which is run by the Corporate Europe Observatory and Lobby Control, told POLITICO that Kaili sent several follow-up emails demanding that ELONtech’s information be removed. Cann added that all data is taken “from the EU lobby Transparency Register so all the info we show would have come from there and would have been self-declared by the registrant itself.”
Indeed, ELONtech appears in archived data from the Transparency Register, which shows that the “non-governmental organization” was registered on October 2, 2020; Cann said that ELONtech appeared to have remained on the register until May 2022 before being removed.
In an email, the Transparency Register Secretariat told POLITICO that ELONtech was automatically removed in May 2022 due to its “failure to transfer and update its data in line with the requirements of [a] new interinstitutional agreement,” which introduced stricter disclosure rules.
LobbyFacts.eu’s entry for ELONtech has more information than the register’s archive regarding which subjects the entity was interested in. Under the “Main EU files targeted” label, LobbyFacts.eu shows that ELONtech provided “Contribution to EU Blockchain Observatory,” without any specific information on what that contribution might have been.
The EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum is a European Commission-funded think tank. First created in 2018 as a pilot project, it often featured blockchain-boosting Eva Kaili at its events; in 2021, Kaili secured €525,000 in further EU funding for the project’s continuation through an amendment to the EU’s budget procedure.
Since 2020, the blockchain think tank has been run by a consortium of seven partners, three of which are Greek organizations, including one — research institute CERTH — that held a joint event with ELONtech in 2019. Spokespeople for both the Blockchain Observatory and the Commission denied that ELONtech provided any “contribution” to the think tank.
In an email to POLITICO, Mantalena Kaili’s lawyer Michalis Dimitrakopoulos agreed that “ELONtech had no involvement with the development of the EU Blockchain Observatory, or contribution, at any point.” Dimitrakopoulos also said that ELONtech had “no legal entity,” “never received European funding” and “had nothing to do with lobbying services.”
“We, too, do not know why [ELONtech] falsely appeared on this registry without any justification,” the lawyer said, adding that he had contacted the Transparency Register about the matter and was awaiting a response.
Whoever created it, the Transparency Register’s entry for ELONtech does contain its correct address and a staffer’s correct phone number — although that information can be retrieved from one event-promotion page on ELONtech’s website.
Dimitrakopoulos did not immediately respond to follow-up questions about who might have created the entry without Mantalena Kaili’s knowledge. At the time of publication, the Transparency Register Secretariat did not reply to POLITICO’s questions about the likelihood that ELONtech might have been added to the registry by someone outside the organization.
