Court investigates Pegasus manufacturers and former Civil Guard and intelligence officials

A local Barcelona court has accepted to investigate a criminal complaint filed by five businessmen and technology developers against former senior officials of Spain's secret services, the National Intelligence Center (CNI), Guardia Civil leadership, and the companies that manufacture the Pegasus and Candiru spyware.

The document accuses the defendants of alleged crimes of disclosure of secrets and illegal access to computer systems.

Proceedings were admitted on September 16, and the investigation phase is now underway.

The judge has given the prosecution five days to report on the matter.

The legal action, coordinated by the victims' association Sentinel Alliance, stands out for being the first to explicitly ask the courts to investigate the use of Candiru, a high-impact spyware that the Spanish government has not admitted to acquiring or using to date.

It will also be the first time that the courts have investigated the Guardia Civil for the use of these spyware programs.

The discovery of an active infection in one of the plaintiffs's devices triggered Microsoft to launch a critical security update that protected more than 1.3 billion devices worldwide.

The plaintiffs have requested a series of actions to identify the scope of the espionage and those responsible for it.

The former director of the CNI, Paz Esteban, former directors of the Guardia Civil, Félix Vicente Azón Vilas and María Gámez Gámez, as well as the directors of NSO Group, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, and Saito Tech Ltd, Isaac Zack, are summoned to testify as investigated.

'Catalangate' spyware scandal

Phones of at least 65 Catalan politicians and civil society members were infected with spyware between 2017 and 2020 on several occasions as an investigation from The New Yorker magazine and Citizen Lab research group shows.

The espionage case known as 'Catalangate' has already had political and judicial consequences. 'Catalangate' is the name that Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto-based research group that reports on high-tech human rights abuses gave its investigation into the espionage of several Catalan pro-independence politicians, activists, and their close associates. 

It is "the largest forensically documented cluster of such attacks and infections on record," the New Yorker published in 2022. 

Phones were infected using spyware programs Pegasus and Candiru. Pegasus, from Israeli company NSO Group, is known internationally for its previous infections of renowned people, such as murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or members of Rwanda’s opposition party.

Candiru, founded by former NSO Group employees, is not as well known but is similar to Pegasus.