The secret from Minsk

Summary: A fourteen-part publication about the EPO will be released tonight, starting with Part I and continuing on a daily basis

A new EPO series is currently being finalised for release. There will be 14 parts in total.

This series is provisionally titled "From Belarus With Love" and it explores the EPO's little-known connections to the Belarus IT sector.

The main focus this time is on the EPO's "outsourcing" partner SaM Solutions, a software development company ostensibly headquartered in Gilching near Munich. SaM's Gilching office seems to be just a "postbox" and the company's main "delivery center" is located in Minsk.

"The main focus this time is on the EPO's "outsourcing" partner SaM Solutions, a software development company ostensibly headquartered in Gilching near Munich. SaM's Gilching office seems to be just a "postbox" and the company's main "delivery center" is located in Minsk."The series will also look more generally at the political situation in Belarus and the strained relationship between the IT sector and the Lukashenko regime. There was a long period of "peaceful coexistence" which came to an abrupt end in 2020 following a rigged Presidential election and a brutal crackdown against the opposition.

The EPO's dependency on the Belarus IT sector clearly has implications for the organisation's "digital sovereignty". The matter seems to deserve public scrutiny, especially against the background of current events in the Ukraine.

More coming up soon.

Watch this space... ⬆