Author: Raphael Sartre
WASHINGTON, Dec 30 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration has lifted sanctions against three executives linked to spyware consortium Intellexa, according to a notice posted on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website.
The move partially reverses sanctions imposed last year by then-President Joe Biden’s administration against seven people linked to Intellexa. The U.S. Treasury Department at the time described the consortium, launched by former Israeli intelligence officer Tal Dilian, as “a complex international network of decentralized companies that built and commercialized a comprehensive suite of highly intrusive spyware products.”
A Treasury spokesman declined to comment.
A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the removal “came as part of normal administrative procedures in response to a request to reconsider the petition.” The official added that each has “demonstrated steps to separate itself from the Intellexa alliance.”
Intellexa representatives did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
The notice said sanctions were lifted against Sara Hamou, who the U.S. government accuses of providing management services to Intellexa; Andrea Gambazzi, whose company the U.S. government alleges had distribution rights to the Predator spyware; and Merom Harpaz, whom U.S. officials described as an executive of the consortium.
Gambazi, Hamu and Harpaz did not immediately respond to messages sent directly to them or their representatives. Dillion, who remains on the sanctions list, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The Intellexa consortium’s flagship “Predator” spyware was at the center of a scandal for allegedly spying on a journalist, a prominent opposition figure and dozens of others in Greece, while in 2023 a group of investigative news outlets reported that the Vietnamese government had attempted to use Intellexa’s tools to hack members of the U.S. Congress.
Dillion has previously denied any involvement or wrongdoing in the Greek case and has not commented publicly on the attempted hacking of U.S. lawmakers.
In the first wave of sanctions issued last March, the U.S. government accused Intellexa of “proliferating commercial spyware and surveillance technology” for authoritarian regimes and claimed that its software was used to “covertly spy on U.S. government officials, journalists, and policy experts.”
(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
