Mexico: USD 300 Million In Spyware Spending Included Kickbacks

Mexico City (AP) Mexico's top anti-money laundering investigator has said that officials from previous administrations from 2012 to 2018 spent about USD 300 million in government money to purchase spyware from the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group. The bills for programs like the Pegasus spyware appear to have included excess payments that may have been channelled back to former government officials as kickbacks. Santiago Nieto, the head of Mexico's Financial Intelligence Unit, said on Wednesday that the information is being given to prosecutors in Mexico. Nieto said the amounts paid and the way they were paid suggested government corruption in an already questionable telephone tapping program that targeted journalists, activists and opposition figures, who at the time included President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador and his inner circle. "This implies or at least presumes the existence of acts of corruption, by selling (the spyware) at inflated prices to the government between the years 2012 and 2018," Nieto said..

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