Enrique Peña Nieto spent over $ 30 million on Pegasus spyware | Mexico is the country where this Israeli technology has been used the most

The government of the former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto spent over $ 30 million buying spyware Pegasus of the Israeli firm NSO Group, as confirmed on Wednesday by the Financial Intelligence Unit (IUF) of Mexico.

Recent research known as Project Pegasus by Forbidden stories Yes Amnesty International revealed that Mexico is the country where software released by Israel is used the most. Among the global list of 50,000 telephone numbers, some 15,000 correspond to journalists, politicians and human rights activists in Mexico.

As detailed by the head of the FIU, Santiago Nieto Castillo, the Grupo Tech Bull, a shell company formed by Balam Seguridad Privada and linked to Israeli group NSO, had a contract for Pegasus in 2014 with the Attorney General’s Office (the current Attorney General’s Office) and with the Director of the Criminal Investigation Agency at the time, Thomas Zeron, now a fugitive in Israel. “This contract is $ 32 million developed by the Israeli company NSO Group to which the resources have been transferred,” he said.

“It should be noted that this is not the first reported case in Mexico of acquiring ‘malware’, the first case dates back to the administration of Felipe Calderón and it has to do with the hiring of Génaro García Luna, ”Nieto said with reference to the Nice Track spyware, a service similar to that of Pegasus hired in 2012 by Luna’s security secretary, currently imprisoned in the United States. United. awaiting trial for drug trafficking. Nice Track is software developed by the firm Nice Ltd based in Israel. According to the review Forbes, NSO Group had former employees of Nice Ltd.

In addition, the head of the UIF referred to the large sums that the shell company Grupo Tech Bull has received from concentrated accounts of the Mexican government. “It’s not just incongruous amounts. But also that these accounts work with federal government concentrator accounts with much higher amounts, which implies or at least The existence of acts of corruption is presumed when they are sold at a high price to the Government of the Republic from 2012 to 2018“he underlined. Nieto Castillo added that the signing Balam Security carried out transactions via Tech Bull to send resources to individuals and companies in various countries.

“During the López Obrador administration, these groups were not hired,” said Nieto, who said the hiring ended on December 31, 2018, days after the current president took office. .

AMLO is one of 15,000 people in Mexico who have been victims of espionage by the government of his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, as revealed by the consortium of 17 international media which published the investigation of Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International . At least 50 people around AMLO have been spied on, including his family and personal doctor.

Also among those spied on in Mexico via the Pegasus software is the CNN reporter, Carmen aristegui with his son and his producer, Karina Maciel. The phone number used by journalist Cecilio Pineda, assassinated in March 2017, also appears. The British newspaper The Guardian revealed that Pineda’s cell phone had disappeared from the crime scene and that a week before his murder, the number had been viewed as interesting by a client of Israeli company NSO Group.