The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, accused Ran Gonen of money laundering this Tuesdayglobal security director of the Israeli company NSO Technologies, for allegedly receiving five million dollars in cash as part of payment for Pegasus software, used for political espionage.
“I believe that the director of NSO Group, Mr. Ran Gonen, has committed a crime in Colombia, because in Colombia it is not possible for any citizen, national or foreign, to carry cash in an amount such as five million dollars, that It’s called money laundering.”Petro said in a statement. For this reason, he said, he will send the information he has to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office (Public Ministry) to investigate what happened.
Petro, a defender of the Palestinian cause, broke relations with Israel last May in rejection of that country’s bombing of the Gaza Strip and later banned coal exports as part of his condemnation of the Jewish state.
The president revealed last month in a presidential address that the Police Intelligence Directorate (Dipol) paid cash for the alleged purchase of Pegasus to the Israeli company and the money “was transported by air from Bogotá to Tel Aviv on June 27, 2021” and on September 18 of the same year, when it was declared to customs and deposited into the company’s account.
Pegasus software in Colombia
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On the second trip, he stated today, Gonen came and he took five million dollars out of the total of eleven million which the president says was paid for the purchase of the software. Pegasus, created by NSO Group Technologies Ltd., is capable of facilitating wiretapping, spying on emails and text communications through applications such as WhatsApp, and scanning documents contained in the memory of mobile phones.
According to Cambio Magazine, authorities are apparently studying whether several payments were actually made and not all the cash was taken on the plane. All of this to find out what area of the State this money would have come from. for the payment of the software that was purchased at that time, when the country was experiencing weeks of social protests in which the Government was accused of strongly attacking the protesters and also one year before the presidential elections.
Since Petro made this complaint public, The Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigationbut from Police intelligence they have not yet been able to determine said purchase or if the software is in use; Nor has it been possible to know where the money for the payment came from and if it was actually made from the State coffers.
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EFE
