A Panamanian entrepreneur, the Latin Snowden

Mayer Mizrachi is a Panamanian technology entrepreneur who became a pawn in a chess game, leading to a political persecution by his own government.

Can you imagine being pursued or spied on by your own government? In the United States, this was long considered mere rumor until June 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed information about how the National Security Agency (NSA) was recording phone calls of its citizens and gathering internet activity data, as well as spying on leaders of other governments worldwide. In response to these actions, Snowden remains a topic of debate as either a hero or a traitor. However, it is clear that the government of the United States betrayed its own citizens and other world leaders first (as part of its anti-terrorism security measures). But such cases of espionage and political persecution have not only occurred in the United States; there have also been significant cases in Latin America, such as that of Panamanian entrepreneur Mayer Mizrachi.

In 2013, Mayer founded Criptext, a secure digital messaging company based in New York. The following year, Criptext entered into a contract with the Panamanian government because the government reported having received an attack on its high-ranking officials via WhatsApp (before WhatsApp encrypted messages). That same year, Mayer and his team were named the most innovative and globally promising company by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and they also raised $500,000 in investment. Mayer was riding high and experiencing the success every technology entrepreneur seeks, but it wouldn't last long.

In 2015, during a trip to Colombia with friends, Mayer was detained due to an Interpol alert in his name, stemming from a criminal lawsuit filed against him by the Panamanian government, alleging that Criptext had not delivered the contracted licenses.

"At first, I laughed! I said to myself, how can they claim that we didn't deliver the software when they used it and we have all the evidence to prove it? The software was put into use by the state, but when there was a change of government in mid-2014, all activity on the platform stopped completely. I reached out to the new government team in charge of the platform, contacted them, met with them, but still they did not use the encrypted communication software. I never imagined it would become the spearhead for initiating a baseless persecution against me. I ended up being the catalyst for a government that has covered up Odebrecht and many other things."

Weeks after being detained, Mayer was granted bail of $100,000, allowing him to regain his freedom. However, despite posting bail, he spent six months in a maximum-security prison in Colombia at the request of the Panamanian government, where he suffered violations of his human rights. Within this maximum-security prison, this young entrepreneur managed to convince the guards to allow prisoners access to cell phones, arguing that this would help ease internal tension in the prison. However, upon gaining access to a smartphone, this technologically savvy young man contacted his team of programmers and they decided to launch, free of charge, from the Colombian prison, the secure messaging app they had sold to the Panamanian government, as a form of protest and public demonstration that they had indeed created the technology they sold.

Upon his release from prison, Mayer sought political asylum from the Colombian government, as everything indicated that this entrepreneur was being used as a pawn in a chess game, as his father was romantically involved with the sister of former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli. With the arrival of the new government of Juan Carlos Varela (former vice president under Martinelli), he was being persecuted by his own government, despite having all the evidence to prove his innocence. The evidence was so compelling that Interpol removed Mayer's case from its database as it deemed it unsubstantiated. Despite the fact that human rights organizations state that a person cannot be deported to their country of origin if they seek political asylum, and that Mayer traveled to Colombia from Miami and holds Jamaican nationality, the Colombian government arbitrarily expelled him to Panama. Since September 8, 2016, Mayer has been unable to leave his country due to his legal proceedings. He was even prevented from traveling to Switzerland in March 2017 to receive an award his company Criptext had won at SeedStars World. Additionally, Mayer has been unable to participate in major technology conferences as he used to, and he couldn't even attend Ted Talks or meet with investors from Silicon Valley.

Despite all the legal challenges, Mayer and his partners have persisted in making Criptext a global success, seeking to raise capital for a new encrypted email platform. However, investors wanted nothing to do with a startup with this level of legal complexity.

"No one wanted to open the door for us until I met Silicon Valley angel investor Marina Acton, who decided to invest because she knows what it's like to be pursued by your government and believed in our vision of encrypted emails. She led a $1.4 million funding round in Criptext, with which we will launch a new decentralized secure email service in 2018. The irony of all this is that Marina got to know us after reading the Forbes article about Criptext launching its app from prison!"

It has been more than three years since Mayer and Criptext began their David vs. Goliath battle. In this battle, Mayer's innocence has already been proven. However, Mayer Mizrachi's case is one of thousands of cases of political persecution that occur every day in Latin America and the world. In a world that is in the 21st century, where citizens with access to a smartphone can be reporters of injustice and a world where entrepreneurs, journalists, activists, etc., can be a counterbalance so that no government tramples over the laws.