Tal Dalian, former Israeli intelligence agent and CEO of Intellexa, has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for possible human rights violations stemming from the misuse of his spyware in various regions of the world. Digital media alerts information.
This punishment, which includes Sarah Alexandra Faisal Hammou, Dillian's wife and partner, and five of the companies in her group for developing the Predator spyware, comes to light when the violations committed with Predator and the suspicious business of the corporate network created around Intellexa and its French partner Nexa, are revealed. In the Predator files.
According to other reports and official criminal investigations in Greece, Delian used a combination of hacking and psychological warfare techniques on behalf of several countries to which NSO ended up restricting its products due to their misuse of its tools. Also according to those reports, Tal conducted business with other authoritarian governments that NSO considered too volatile even before some governments around the world confronted him.
Intellexa was recently placed on the US Commerce Department's export control list to address massive spyware abuse, a list it shares with NSO Group, which created Pegasus.
The disclosed documents show that the French-Israeli group sold spyware to a few dictatorships in collusion with several European countries, including Vietnam, Madagascar, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia; In addition to illegally spying on various figures in the public and political sphere such as the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Mizzola, the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, as well as the Deputy Director of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Manuel Parang, among others. Others.
The penalty implies that from this moment on, the assets and interests of Dillian and his wife in the United States, as well as their companies, including companies in which they own at least 50%, will be blocked. This means that the United States prohibits conducting financial operations with these people and companies, and warns banks that they will be subject to sanctions if they allow this.
According to the United States, these harsh sanctions on Intellexa are an implementation of a decision issued early last February regarding readiness to confront offensive Israeli spy companies that exceed certain limits in their work or that the United States considers outside the scope of their work, by undermining human rights. And democratic values.
Photo (CC BY) Gibran Aquino
