Shocking New Affidavit

Allegations that Konnech sent PII of U.S. poll workers to China

On April 7, 2023, True the Vote, Inc. filed a Supplemental Submission for Reply in Support of Motion for Leave to Inspect in the Konnech, Inc. vs. True the Vote, Inc. case in the Southern District of Texas (Case 4:22-cv-03096).

True the Vote had "just received the attached Affidavit of Grant Bradley." Grant Bradley is the former Implementation Manager at Konnech. Bradley's Affidavit, marked as Exhibit H, corroborates and expands upon information provided to the Court last month by former Konnech Australia employee Peter McAllister in Exhibit G.

For those who prefer to listen to the Affidavit:

Mr. Bradley states that shortly after he was hired at Konnech, Founder and President Eugene (Jianwei) Yu "approached me about making a campaign contribution to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's campaign in his name, and said that Konnech would reimburse me for." Mr. Bradley rejected Mr. Yu's request. Making a campaign contribution in another person's name is known as a conduit contribution, you may have also heard the term Straw Donor scheme, and the practice is illegal. It is often done in an attempt to bypass contribution limits.

No person shall make a contribution in the name of another person or knowingly permit his name to be used to effect such a contribution, and no person shall knowingly accept a contribution made by one person in the name of another person. 2 U.S.C. § 441f

The remainder of Exhibit H is even more shocking! Grant Bradley asserts that not only has Konnech employed Chinese nationals for the development, design, and coding of U.S. election software, but that Personal Identifying Information (PII) of U.S. election workers was sent to Chinese nationals!

Konnech "provided programmers in China private data of U.S.-based election workers, to include social security numbers and other identifying information." Mr. Bradley "witnessed customers' data (specifically poll-watcher information) being made accessible to foreign nationals in China."

Mr. Bradley describes the process Konnech used when onboarding Chinese-based programmers. Merriam-Webster defines onboarding as "the act or process of orienting and training a new employee."

"The standard process Konnech used to onboard China-based programmers was to create customer environments for the programmers by uploading files containing all of the American customers’ poll workers' information, polling locations, and other data to DingTalk or Jira." Jira was accessed by Konnech leaders and DingTalk by the entire Chinese team. Grant estimates 80-100 Chinese nationals were employed by Konnech.

All of the American customers’ poll workers’ information…
All of the American customers’ polling locations…
All of the American customers’ other data…
Accessed by… the entire Chinese team

When "political pressure to sever ties with China" ramped up, "Konnech, having no intention of severing the relationship with the Chinese nationals, hired them back as independent contractors and assigned to them the exact same responsibilities they held as employees." This is further backed up by Peter McAllister's statement in Exhibit G: "Despite Mr. Yu's instruction to me to tell ECQ [Electoral Commission of Queensland] that Konnech Inc had shuttered its Chinese subsidiary and no longer employed Chinese nationals to work on its elections software, I was aware that the work continued to be done by the same China-based teams but under a different contractual agreement."

Mr. McAllister further states "As far as I am aware neither Konnech, Inc nor Konnech Australia Pty Ltd ever had any development staff and instead always drew on the more than 100 developer resources available to them in China. I believe these developers to be employees of JinHuaHongZheng Technology, an affiliated Chinese company." You can read more about Jinhua Hongzheng Technology (金华鸿正科技有限公司) in Kanekoa's thorough article here.

Supplying foreign individuals with County data was specifically forbidden in the contract Konnech entered into with Los Angeles County in 2020.

Only Contractor’s staff who are based in the United States and are citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States shall have access to any County data, including personally identifiable information, hosted in County's instance of the System Software

DeKalb County Georgia had a similar clause in their 2022 agreement.

Client’s Data Shall Not be Hosted on Foreign Servers. Konnech agrees and by its execution of this Agreement certifies that CLIENT’s data shall only be stored on servers that are physically located in the 48 contiguous states of the United States. Konnech further agrees and acknowledges that the requirement that CLIENT’s data shall only be stored on servers that are physically located in the 48 contiguous states of the United States is a material term of this Agreement.

Mr. Bradley mentions in item E, the open source project management software called ZenTao.

A search of zentao.konnech.info reveals it is hosted on the IP address 101.66.244.52. That IP address is located on the China Unicom Backbone in the city of Jinhua, Zhejiang, China. The same city as the Chinese company Jinhua Hongzheng Technology as well as Konnech's subsidiary Jinhua Yulian Network Technology Co., Ltd. (金华宇联网络科技有限公司).

Additional Hongzheng Tech websites have resided at 101.66.244.52. You can read more about that in The Authority's article here.

According to Grant Bradley's Affidavit, Konnech supervisors instructed him "to say outwardly to customers that poll worker data was not stored overseas, was not available to foreign nationals, and that we had no idea why Eugene Yu had been arrested." Mr. Bradley, Konnech supervisors, and Eugene Yu himself knew this was untrue. "Specifically, Eugene Yu had previously told me that Konnech used Chinese nationals to work on Konnech software and coding and claimed 'everyone' did it." Don't worry about it he was told. Grant Bradley, "refused to make these or any other representations to customers (or anyone else) that I knew or thought were untrue." Mr. Yu also told Peter McAllister the same lies. "Everyone, including companies like Microsoft, 'was doing it' -- that is, using programmers in China". According to Peter, Eugene Yu "alone controlled the staff in China."

Following Eugene Yu's arrest in October 2022, some strange things allegedly happened. Mr. McAllister states that another Konnech employee, Luis Nabergoi "expressed his concern that somebody had tried to hack into his work Apple ID." He suspected someone "was attempting to assume his identity in order to gain access privileges" and that it was "done by somebody who worked for Konnech, Inc. in China." " 'Another weird thing' had happened", deletion of files from "all the company computers" and all "conversations referencing or involving Eugene's nephew, Jun Yu, on DingTalk, had suddenly been removed."

Jun Yu was also one of the initial investors of Jinhua Hongzheng Technology Co., Ltd.

O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
~ Sir Walter Scott