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An exclusive investigative report by the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo upended the narrative surrounding Colombia’s controversial purchase of the “Israeli” spyware, Pegasus. According to the report, two US government officials admitted that they were not only behind the acquisition but also financed it.
The reaction of President Gustavo Petro was almost immediate. “If this is true, things would indeed be worse [than we thought],” he wrote on the social network X, where he quoted a tweet from the right wing-aligned journalist Vicky Dávila.
Later, the president called for making a distinction between measures to ensure “cyber defense,” and illicit “espionages,” as the latter violates the rule of law and the sovereignty of the country.
“We have talked about cyber defense, which has now become fashionable, and words can sometimes be confusing,” President Petro said at the anniversary event of the Colombian Air Force. “Cyber defense is not the same as espionage. And in that too, we have to draw a line, because the lines are also weak. It is not the same to have software to hunt down criminals as it is to do so without a court order, unless the 1991 Constitution is worth nothing.”
In his opinion, if the allegations of illicit espionage turn out to be true, it would have to be concluded that Colombian democracy “has weakened to the maximum,” since the exercise of sovereignty is not limited to honoring national symbols but ensuring that Colombians are the ones who “make the main decisions” in their country.
“If other people make those decisions, whoever they may be and whatever their motives, then we have lost sovereignty,” he stressed.
Investigations
Colombian media reported that Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo had requested that the Colombian ambassador to the US, Daniel García Peña, enquire with the U.S. government about the acquisition of the spyware.
Currently, both the Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office are handling the investigation of the case. It has been confirmed that there was a transaction amounting to $11 million, which arrived in cash in “Israel,” for the purchase of the Pegasus spyware during the administration of former President Iván Duque.
It is presumed that the money was transported on two flights from Colombia to “Israel,” and the flights departed from an official hangar of the Colombian anti-narcotics police.
Key dates
The scandal over the Pegasus case erupted after a revelation by Petro, who stated in a public address that there were two payments for the purchase of that software, one on June 27, 2021, and another on September 22, 2021, each amounting to $5.5 million.
$5.5 million in cash, supposedly seized in anti-drug operations, was transported on each of the two flights. The Colombian authorities used said resources to buy the spyware. The company NSO Group, owner of Pegasus, was able to deposit the money in Hapoalim Bank, the largest in “Israel.”
However, according to the investigation by El Tiempo, Washington’s plans to acquire the software for Colombia had materialized a year earlier, in 2020, and had not been communicated at that time to the then-president, Iván Duque, without clarifying why it was so.
“We want to make it very clear that this was done in a legal way, there was no illicit payment. It was the United States that financed Colombia’s purchase,” alleged anonymous sources from the Biden administration told El Tiempo.
US funds and supervision
A US official, who allegedly requested anonymity, told El Tiempo that the Biden administration “was committed” to providing funds to Bogotá to acquire the Pegasus software and promote an “anti-drug mission.”
In addition to providing the money, Washington conducted “strict operational oversight” which, according to the anonymous source, was part of the “normal and ongoing commitments with the Colombian government in the war on drugs.”
Dismissing the allegations that Pegasus had been used to spy on Petro, politicians opposing Duque, and magistrates, who have already filed complaints of illegal interceptions, the US official maintained that it was only used “to pursue drug traffickers.”
The interviewee claimed that in 2020, the US was unaware that Pegasus was a malicious software, and that the US policy was changed in 2021 after the scandals related to Pegasus being used to spy on journalists, human rights defenders, and politicians in other parts of the world became public. According to him, the US government “took concrete measures” and “made changes to its system.”
(RT)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/SA
