A Pegasus intermediary facilitated a system of espionage to the police ‘sewers’ of Rajoy

The Israeli businessman Matian Caspy, who according to the Israeli press acted as an intermediary for the company NSO Group, -the owner of the espionage system pegasus-, also provided the ‘sewers’ of the Police of the Government of Mariano Rajoy with a system that allowed breaking into the telephones and mobile devices without leaving a trace.

In a letter of invitation sent on July 31, 2014 by Caspy, one of the owners of the firm Rayzone Groupaddressed to the then Deputy Director of Operations (DAO) of the Police, Eugenio Pino, in which the Israeli firm set an appointment for August 11 of the same year with the intention of perform “a field test” which included “a live demonstration of a tactical passive GSM system,” the letter specifies. Another document indicates that the delivery of the material, which had to be introduced by the Barajas Airport, was going to take place in a hotel in Barcelona.

The letter from the director of Rayzone also shows that the Israeli firm made this offer after the “meetings” and “demonstrations” that they had held on previous dates with the police leadership led by Eugenio Pino, who is prosecuted in the National High Court for allegedly being one of those responsible for the espionage carried out by the police sewers in 2013 on the former treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenaswhich at that time threatened to implicate the leaders of the party then led by Mariano Rajoy in the Gürtel case.

Matian Caspy would have acted as an intermediary since 2010 for the sale of the Pegasus system to the Government of a country, according to information published in Israel, which also indicates that this computer scientist and his company Rayzone managed to collect 60% of the commission for a sale of the espionage system, in which a businessman who is linked to the former president of the United States would also have participated donald trump.

In Spain, the allegedly fraudulent sale to the police leadership of the Rajoy Government became known thanks to the complaint filed on October 31, 2017 by the former head of Internal Affairs of the National Police Corps (CNP) Marcelino Martín-Blas in the Court of Instruction number 2 of Madrid, within the investigation that was carried out when it was found that agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) had been recorded without a court order. And in his complaint, the chief commissioner provided documents that pointed to the surreptitious purchase of this espionage technology.

This chief commissioner assured in his complaint that both Eugenio Pino and his chief of staff, Jose Angel Fuentes Gagosince 2014 they had enough technology to be able to intercept and record conversations and information from smartphones and other electronic devices “without judicial authorization as a consequence of having acquired it from the Israeli company Rayzone Group”, relates the document signed by the lawyer Antonio Alberca.

This lawyer provided the documentation that a police official had received from Pino’s professional accounts and his ‘number two’ that had previously been sent by the Israeli company that was in charge of the alleged espionage. And according to the attorney for Martín-Blas, during the months of July, August and September 2014, Inspector Fuentes Gago, “in order not to leave a trace of the conversations between the police leadership-and the company Rayzone Group LTD, held to acquire technology for intercepting cell phones and other electronic devices,” he asked an official to download to a USB flash drive a document that was attached as a draft in a private email from Google. Thus, they prevented the documentation from being intercepted on the internet.

The information that the official claimed to have received included the letter sent by Matian Caspy to Eugenio Pino, but also a letter addressed to the Rayzone company in which it is made clear that the police leadership was aware of the fraudulent purchase of the material: “As a continuation of the conversation held yesterday, our bosses ask us to inform you of the following: they want to hold a meeting on September 3 to see the results and be able to inform their superiors of the results as well” .

Later, the letter alludes to the supposed payments that the police sewers were going to make to obtain the material for the espionage: “The payment of the 6th will be made as agreed by this means, in the amount of 90. The payment of the 15th will be of 15 and not of 35. The remaining 20 will be delivered on the 3rd at the meeting we hold”.

And, finally, the document provided to the Madrid court reported on how the operation had to be carried out: “They tell us that to pass the material safely, you have to use the Madrid Airport and then take the material to Barcelona. The hotel in Barcelona, ​​without problems. You just have to tell us how many people are coming and how many days, as well as the dates.”

This letter, according to the former head of Internal Affairs, implied that the purchase of the technology from the Israeli company had finally been approved and that was going to be introduced “surreptitiously” in Spain. Precisely, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has requested a 10-year prison sentence in a separate piece of the Villarejo case for the former head of the Madrid aerodrome Carlos Salamanca for allowing the irregular entry of citizens of Equatorial Guinea in exchange for gifts of high economic value.

The publication on October 31, 2017 in the newspaper El País de the complaint filed by Marcelino Martín-Blas in the Madrid Court against Eugenio Pino for hiring the Israeli espionage company was reflected in Villarejo’s agenda, which according to sources in the case to El Periódico de España, he used as a guide for his recordings.

Specifically, the retired commissioner wrote: “Pino: he called for news from El País where he says [el periodista] I help Marcel [Marcelino Martín-Blas] contributed the invoice for the purchase of a telephone monitoring equipment“. A little further down, in relation to the then number two of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Francis Martinez, whom he identifies with the nickname “Chisco”, writes: “About data on the purchase of equipment. He has not replied to my message.” In October 2017, Francisco Martínez had already been out of the Ministry of the Interior for a year.

However, the request of the former head of Internal Affairs did not convince prosecutor Alfonso San Román, -who was investigating the irregular recording of the CNI-, to charge Eugenio Pino and his ‘number two’. And he did not call them to testify, despite the fact that a report from the National Cryptologic Center, a body dependent on the CNI itself, considered it technically possible that one of the police telephones that would have been attacked had installed “a harmful app and that app or another app has deleted all traces of it. It is a technical possibility that we do not know if it was used or not because, as has already been said, there is no trace.

The prosecutor came to defend the purchase of the material to spy, assuming that it would have been used under judicial supervision: “The fact that the National Police Corps buys specific software, if this could finally be proven after carrying out the procedures requested, is not, in itself, a crime. The use of that software by the Police for the fulfillment of its functions and in accordance with legal requirements, it would not be either,” he concluded.