(Bloomberg) — The U.S. government has lifted sanctions on three people it previously accused of helping spread the “Predator” spyware, a sophisticated surveillance technology that was allegedly used against Americans.
The Treasury Department’s lifting of business bans on a trio linked to the Intellexa consortium partially reverses the first U.S. sanctions issued over alleged abuse of a type of software that can secretly take over phones.
Last year, then-President Joe Biden’s administration sanctioned several people and businesses associated with the Intellex consortium for what the government said were their roles in developing, operating and distributing software that was used to target US government officials, journalists and political pundits. In announcing some of the sanctions, the Treasury Department said “the proliferation of commercial spyware poses clear and growing security risks to the United States.”
On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it had lifted sanctions against three people: Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou, Andrea Nicola Constantino Hermes Gambazzi and Merom Harpaz. In announcing the sanctions last year, the finance ministry identified Hamou, a Polish national, as the company’s off-shoring specialist who provided management services to the consortium, including renting office space in Greece. Gambazzi, of Switzerland, is the beneficial owner of the company that owns the distribution rights to the Predator software, the Treasury Department said, while Harpaz is an Israeli and a “top executive” of the consortium.
Contact information for the trio could not be immediately found. The Intellexa consortium, described by the Treasury Department as a “complex international network of decentralized companies,” did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
The Treasury Department removed the three from its sanctions list “as part of the normal administrative process in response to a request to reconsider the petition,” the agency said in a statement to Reuters, adding that each had “demonstrated measures to separate themselves from the Intellexa consortium.” Treasury officials did not respond to emails seeking comment from Bloomberg News on Wednesday.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, called the agency’s turnaround “mysterious.”
“Intellexa’s reputation for ruthlessly spreading cyber capabilities is second to none,” Scott-Railton said on social media platform X. “The sheer volume of Predator abuse is enormous.”
Intellexa was founded by Tal Dilian, a veteran of Israel’s intelligence agency, who founded the company in 2019 and has since supplied spyware to authoritarian regimes, according to the Treasury Department.
In 2023, the US added four Intellexa-related companies to an export blacklist that effectively bans the use of products in the US or the supply of parts to it. The Treasury Department sanctioned Dilian himself in March 2024, along with Hama and five entities associated with the consortium, and the agency issued additional sanctions later that year against what it called “proxies” of the spyware consortium.
Predatory spyware sparked 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 these revelations, the head of Greece’s intelligence agency resigned.
A 2023 investigation by Amnesty International and media organizations found evidence that Predator spyware was used to target UN officials, US lawmakers and the President of the European Parliament.
More such stories are available at bloomberg.com
