Israel shuts investigation into sale of Pegasus spyware to Ghana
Six years ago in May, a High Court in Accra convicted three Ghanaian public officials and sentenced them to various prison terms after finding them guilty of causing financial loss of $4 million to the state in a shady deal in which an Israeli company NSO Group sold the Pegasus spyware system to the National Communications Authority (NCA).
The court presided over by Justice Eric Kyei Baffour ruled that the officials broke Ghanaian law by independently contracting with NSO through a third party – a company called Infralocks Development Ltd. (IDL) – without approval from the relevant authorities. Infralocks was the local representatives of NSO Group.
They were convicted of violating procurement laws and conspiring to steal and launder public funds. One of the officials personally profited $200,000 from the deal, the court found.
However, George Derrick Oppong, a former Director of IDL was acquitted and discharged.
The Pegasus spyware, developed and sold across the world by the NSO Group, uses the principle of ‘zero click’ to infect the devices of targets and can use a simple missed call to take over a target’s phone.
Pegasus can thoroughly take over any device by exploiting the security vulnerabilities in a device or app. It is able to take over Android, iPhone or Blackberry. Once it takes over a phone, it turns it into a secret camera and microphone and operate remotely, providing live feeds to the operator, and the owner of the phone would never know.
Many governments have been found to have obtained the spyware and used it to spy on their citizens including journalists and opposition politicians.
It is known to have been used in Ghana on some opposition party members including a journalist.
Israeli authorities gave signs that they would investigate the sale of the spyware to Ghana, but never had the political will to do so. Sale of the spyware requires clearance from the Israeli Defence Ministry, but in the case of Ghana, it was found that the Ministry did not clear the sale. The Israeli authorities hinted that they were going to investigate the matter for suspected corruption. But for about six years after talks about investigating the matter, the authorities have closed the investigations.
Ghana Business News learned last year that the investigation passed from one state agency to the other. It went from the State Attorney to the head of the police investigations division, and to a special investigative unit within the Ministry of Defence. None of them wanted to take on the investigation due to their proximity to the entity being investigated—NSO Group.
Israeli civil society organisations and activists including lawyer and human rights activist, Eitay Mack who have been pressing the Israeli government to investigate the matter, writing for the Wire said: “We argued in our request for an investigation that NSO’s decision to halt its services appears to have stemmed from the suspension of the remaining payments. Because neither NSO nor Israel’s defense and foreign ministries chose to file a complaint on their own initiative, the impression was created that they preferred to avoid any investigation into the transaction.
Our request for an investigation was based on Amendment No. 99 to Israel’s Penal Code, enacted in 2008, which introduced Section 291A criminalising the bribery of foreign public officials. The amendment was part of Israel’s accession to anti-corruption conventions led by the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).”
Mack also noted that Ghana never asked Israel to open investigations into the matter.
By Emmanuel K Dogbevi