US Lifts Sanctions On Trio Accused Of Work On 'Predator' Spyware

(MENAFN- Live Mint) (Bloomberg) -- The US government has lifted sanctions on three people who it previously accused of aiding in the proliferation of“Predator” spyware, a sophisticated surveillance technology that's allegedly been used against Americans.

The Department of Treasury's removal of the business bans on the trio associated with the Intellexa Consortium partially reverses the first US sanctions issued over the alleged misuse of a type of software that can secretively take over phones.

Last year, then-President Joe Biden's administration sanctioned several people and businesses associated with the Intellexa Consortium for what the government said was their roles in developing, operating, and distributing software that was used to target US government officials, journalists and policy experts. In announcing some of the the sanctions, the Treasury Department said“the proliferation of commercial spyware poses distinct and growing security risks to the United States.”

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it had lifted the sanctions against three of the people: Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou, Andrea Nicola Constantino Hermes Gambazzi and Merom Harpaz. Last year, in announcing sanctions, Treasury described Hamou, a Polish national, as a corporate off-shoring specialist who provided the consortium with managerial services, including renting office space in Greece. Gambazzi, from Switzerland, is the beneficial owner of a company that holds distribution rights to the Predator software, Treasury said, while Harpaz is an Israeli and“top executive” at the consortium.

Contact information for the trio couldn't be immediately located. The Intellexa Consortium, which Treasury has described as a“complex international web of decentralized companies,” didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Treasury removed the three from its sanctions list“as part of the normal administrative process in response to a petition request for reconsideration,” the agency said in a statement to Reuters, adding that each of them had“demonstrated measures to separate themselves from the Intellexa Consortium.” Treasury officials didn't respond Wednesday to emails seeking comment from Bloomberg News.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, called the agency's reversal“puzzling.”

“Intellexa's reputation for reckless proliferation of cyber capabilities is unmatched,” Scott-Railton said on the social media platform X.“The pile of Predator abuses is enormous.”

Intellexa was founded by Tal Dilian, an Israeli intelligence agency veteran who started the company in 2019 and has since supplied spyware to authoritarian regimes, according to the Treasury.

In 2023, the US added four companies associated with Intellexa to an export blacklist, which effectively bans use of the products in the US or supplying parts to them. Treasury sanctioned Dilian himself in March 2024, along with Hamou and five entities associated with the consortium, and the agency issued more sanctions against people it called“enablers” of the spyware consortium later that year.

Predator spyware triggered a national scandal in Greece in 2022 after it was allegedly used to target dozens of politicians, journalists and businessmen in the country. Amid the fallout from those revelations, the head of Greece's intelligence service resigned.

A investigation by Amnesty International and media organizations in 2023 found evidence that Predator spyware had been used to target United Nations officials, US lawmakers and the president of the European Parliament.

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