The United States has opened an investigation into whether the Spanish Government, through the part state-owned defence contractor Indra, has helped pass American military software to China.
The US Department of Commerce was examining complaints filed by American defence entrepreneurs. They suspect Indra supplied Chinese industry with product records for strategic high technology, later marketed by several Chinese companies as their own.
The allegations extend to software and hardware for airport infrastructure, according to emails cited by the newspaper. In them, one businessman described discovering that Indra had sold equipment sourced from China that copied one of his products at roughly half the price, without informing him.
The businessman had partnered with Indra to distribute his output across Europe and most of Latin America. The product was a weather-prediction programme designed for use in military and air-safety operations.
He said he had dismantled an exclusivity agreement with Indra covering the LIDAR software at the centre of the claims and started selling it directly. The same messages question Indra’s work on electoral technology, where he said it competed with his former company and took part in election processes while remaining untrustworthy.
Business figures in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the US, have grown wary of trade attachés at the Spanish Consulate General in San Juan. They suspect the aim is to turn the island into a base for penetrating American business, and describe as corporate espionage what is presented as commercial diplomacy.
The consulate allegedly sought to use Puerto Rican contacts to reach US exporters whose members include owners of firms selling military technology used by the Pentagon.
According to the account given to Washington, a Mexican company erased the records of origin of American products so Indra could resell them to China as Chinese technology. Some of those programmes reached Cuba, a destination barred to US companies under the embargo.
Lawyers consulted by the newspaper said the practices, if proven, could amount to theft of trade secrets under the Economic Espionage Act, and to economic espionage if carried out in coordination with a foreign government.
Indra is one of the European Union’s flagship defence companies, with the State holding company SEPI its largest shareholder on about 28 per cent. It led Spain’s sensor and electronics work on the collapsed FCAS fighter programme and was named this month among the founding members of the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance.
Neither Indra nor the Spanish Government had commented on the reported investigation. The claims come after months of friction between Madrid and Washington over defence spending, the war in Iran and Spain’s dealings with China and Venezuela.
