The tangle of espionage with Pegasus points to the diversion of funds in the Peña Nieto era

The head of the Financial Intelligence Unit, Santiago Nieto, this Wednesday, at the National Palace. Presidency of Mexico / Presidency of Mexico / EFE

In Mexico, the

Pegasus

software

case

transcends spying on journalists and activists and points to the diversion of funds. This was explained this Wednesday by the head of the Financial Intelligence Unit, UIF, of the Ministry of Finance, Santiago Nieto, at the press conference offered every morning by the president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. It is the latest in a scandal that has revived this week around the world, with the revelation of lists of potential targets of clients of the

malware

. In Mexico alone, the list consisted of 15,000 individuals.

Without leaving too much space for details, Nieto has painted a bleak picture of the security cabinet of the Government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), an accomplice of a tangle of companies supplying intelligence equipment and shell companies, used interchangeably to obtain contracts. inflated and triangulate money between them.

The

malware's

relationship

with Mexico goes beyond the Peña Nieto Administration and reaches that of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012), but it was during the first years that the network was consolidated and won the majority of contracts.

More information

• The new revelations of the 'Pegasus case' reveal the inaction of the Mexican Prosecutor's Office

• The Mexican Prosecutor's Office says that at least one private company used the Pegasus 'malware'

The data Nieto shared on Wednesday complements those released by the Attorney General's Office (FGR) on Tuesday. In a statement, the agency reported for the first time that at least one company operated Pegasus in Mexico, KBH TRACK. NSO Group, the Israeli company that has developed the

malware

, has always argued that its only clients are governments. Designed to combat organized crime, Pegasus is

intrusive

software

, capable of capturing the camera or microphone of a cell phone. In its statement, the Prosecutor's Office says that "NSO Group used KBH TRACK, from which a hard drive was obtained, in which it is fully demonstrated that said maquiladora company carried out telephone espionage for various applicants."

Both the explanation of the FIU and the message of the FGR draw an attitude that is difficult to understand. The first complaints for the alleged indiscriminate use of Pegasus date back four years. In that time, the Prosecutor's Office has barely managed to build a case, that of the journalist Carmen Aristegui. And it has done so thanks to information provided by Aristegui herself, from a source that leaked thousands of documents from the tangle of companies. From what Nieto explained this morning, none of the data that the FIU has collected appears in the FGR investigation. Nieto has said that the information will be delivered to the Prosecutor's Office next week.

Faced with the avalanche of data in recent days, the questions multiply.

By whose order did KBH TRACK operate the

Pegasus

software

?

From the old Prosecutor's Office, the Army, the Cisén, the federal intelligence agency?

The three agencies are the ones that signed contracts with the NSO Group to acquire the malware from 2012 to 2018. Was it just one private company or was it several?

If so, with what criteria did they do it?

The business network

Part of the companies mentioned by Nieto this Wednesday are known to Mexican society, in the case of Balam Seguridad or Grupo Tech Bull. These are companies linked to a contract that the old administration of the Prosecutor's Office signed in 2014 to acquire Pegasus, for just over $ 32 million. The document, signed by the former head of investigation of the Prosecutor's Office, Tomás Zerón, today a fugitive from justice, was released at the end of Peña Nieto's administration, in one of the first stages of the scandal over the

Pegasus case

. Already then, the organization Mexicanos contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad investigated Grupo Tech Bull, which it identified as a front company for Balam.

Nieto explained that the two companies are related to at least 10 others. “Those 10 companies have front characteristics due to their scarce permanence of resources.

In addition, they have shareholders and legal representatives in common and coincidences in homes ”, explained the official.

“Most of the addresses belong to virtual offices.

Furthermore, the shareholders are relatively young and there are inconsistencies between their sociodemographic profile and the nature of the companies ”.

The head of the FIU has given some details about the contracts obtained by the companies with agencies of the federal government and state governments, in total several hundred million pesos.

Many of the contracts, which Nieto has presented in a powerpoint, do not even appear to have to do with espionage services.

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