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Germany charges four for selling spyware to Turkey

German prosecutors have charged four former company executives with illegally selling software to Turkey's secret services for use to spy on the country's opposition, officials said on Monday.

Published: 22 May 2023 15:37 CEST
Spyware
Illustration: picture alliance/dpa | Sebastian Gollnow

The suspects were from FinFisher, a Munich-based company developing and selling spyware to law enforcement agencies and intelligence services.

They are charged with breaking laws that ban the sale of “dual-use” products — which can be used for both civilian and military purposes — to countries outside the European Union, unless authorities grant approval.

According to Munich prosecutors, the company allegedly signed a contract worth over five million euros in 2015 to sell monitoring software to Turkish secret services, along with training and support.

In 2017, the “FinSpy” software was offered to a Turkish opposition movement for download from a fake website “under false pretences, in order to spy on them”, the prosecutors said.

The spyware allows its users to gain control of computers and smartphones, and monitor communications.

In an effort to hide FinFisher’s involvement, a Bulgarian company was named on the contract as the seller of the spyware.

Neither the German nor the Bulgarian authorities issued a licence for the export of the software, the prosecutors said.

German authorities began investigating after four NGOs that defend press freedom and human rights filed complaints in 2019.

The charges were filed in Munich district court earlier this month.

Concerns about the use of spyware have been growing since a 2017 investigation into Pegasus software by a consortium of media outlets.

It found Pegasus was used in various countries to spy on 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 rights activists and 65 business executives.

READ ALSO: German IT watchdog says ‘no evidence’ of Huawei spying

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CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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