The US government has initiated a new round of sanctions against commercial spyware makers and their organizations.
In a press release published by the US Department of the Treasury, the country’s government outlined further punishments on Intellexa executives, associates, and organizations that were part of the consortium.
In March 2024, the US government sanctioned Intellexa Consortium, a company that developed and sold the notorious Predator spyware. The group consists of Intellexa S.A. (Greece), Intellexa Limited (Ireland), Cytrox AD (North Macedonia), Cytrox Holdings ZRT (Hungary), and Thalestris Limited (Ireland).
Executives and firms
Predator is a piece of commercial spyware that grants access to data stored and transmitted from target devices such as smartphones. It is a potent piece of malware that works without victim interaction, and was allegedly often sold to authoritarian governments targeting political opponents, dissidents, journalists, human rights activists, and similar individuals.
At the time, the US government also sanctioned the group’s founder, Tal Jonathan Dilian, as well as Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou, a corporate off-shoring specialist providing managerial services. This week, five new people were added to the list, and another company.
The people are Felix Bitzios (an owner of a company that supplied Predator to an unnamed foreign country), Merom Harpaz and Panagiota Karaoli (top executives in the consortium), Andrea Nicola Constantino Hermes Gambazzi (the beneficial owner of Thalestris Limited and Intellexa Limited, members of the Intellexa Consortium), and Artemis Artemiou (Artemiou) (general manager and member of the board of Cytrox Holdings Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag).
Among the sanctioned entities is now Aliada Group, a British Virgin Islands-based company and member of the Intellexa Consortium. The Treasury claims this form enabled “tens of millions of dollars of transactions involving the network”.
“The United States will not tolerate the reckless propagation of disruptive technologies that threatens our national security and undermines the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens,” said Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith. “We will continue to hold accountable those that seek to enable the proliferation of exploitative technologies, while also encouraging the responsible development of technologies that align with international standards.”
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