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The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petrostated yesterday that directors of the Israeli company NSO Group They took the $11 million in cash from the 2021 sale of the spyware by plane Pegasus to the government, a transaction investigated for suspicions of “money laundering.”
According to a confidential report revealed by Petro At the beginning of September, the software that infects mobile phones to extract information was acquired for that sum in cash during the government of his predecessor and political rival, the rightist Ivan Duque (2018-2022).
This Tuesday Petro gave more details about the case and pointed directly to company officials.
“On the chartered flight M-ABGG The Israeli citizen arrives on the 25th and leaves on June 26, 2021. Odet Gindi con Yehuda Lahav, business director of NSO Group,” the Israeli maker of Pegasus, the president wrote Tuesday on his X account.
According to the president, the plane landed in an anti-narcotics police hangar and, on its return to Israel, “They take 5.5 million dollars given by officials” of Duque.
On a second flight, he said Petro, Gindi and the firm’s global director of security, Ran Gonen, took the second half. Petro did not delve into Gindi’s role or his link with the Israeli firm.
But consider that the “director of NSO Group, Mr. Ran Gonen has committed a crime in Colombia.”
“In Colombia it is not possible no citizen, neither national nor foreign, carry cash in such an amount (…) That is called money laundering,” said the president.
Government officials of Duque They deny having managed the purchase in 2021, the year in which massive protests were recorded in Colombia that left dozens of people dead.
“We are certain that (the transaction) is money laundering,” Colombia’s intelligence chief, Jorge Lemus, had told public television at the end of September. The first reports on the use of spyware began in 2018.