It's not clear from those sites if Karpales was the original creator of the domain, or if his contact info is only on there as a result of his having purchased the domain in 2013 (those records say "updated 2013"). I'd say the latter is much more likely.
That would explain it. "believing in them since 1998" is quite strange however.
We don't seem to know who owned the domain before him. Is there a way to get historical whois info