An arsenal of angry European Parliament members (MEPs) is demanding answers from senior commissioners about why EU subsidies are ending up in the pockets of spyware companies.
The group of 39 politicians referred to recent investigations that revealed countries such as Italy, Greece, Hungary, and Spain have funnelled millions of taxpayer euros at a time to help support commercial spyware-makers' finances.
They wrote: "According to these findings, entities such as Intellexa, Cy4Gate, Verint and Cognyte – whose technologies have been linked to unlawful surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders and political actors in the EU, as well as in third countries with dreadful human rights records – have benefitted from public financing, including EU programmes.
"This raises serious questions about the governance, transparency, and accountability of the Union's funding mechanisms. In the light of the scandals uncovered in Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary, and Spain, among others, and of the recommendations of the PEGA inquiry, it is deeply troubling that the Union is directly or indirectly enabling tools that erode democracy, fundamental rights, and the rule of law."
MEPs cited investigative journalism from Follow The Money, which revealed in September that institutions such as Spain's public-funded Centre for the Development Of Industrial Technology (CDTI) handed over €1.3 million (c $1.5 million) to now-shuttered spyware peddler Mollitiam Industries.
Funding findings According to FTM, EU science research program Horizon 2020 awarded €1.74 million (c $2 million) to projects that involved Innova, which supplied surveillance tools to Italian prosecutors' offices. The European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund also funded Innova around €41,350, and the former additionally doled out around three-quarters of the money for a project run by Movia between 2019-2021, a company that develops the Spider spyware. Various other EU programs have contributed funds to other spyware companies, such as Area, Memento Labs (formerly Hacking Team), and Negg Group, FTM claimed. Perhaps most controversially, the European Commission awarded a €60,000 (c $70,500) contract to France-based Nexa Technologies in 2015. At the time, Nexa was part of the Intellexa Alliance of spyware companies, which in turn was linked to the Intellexa Consortium, which was previously sanctioned by the US for its involvement in the infamous At the time, Nexa was part of the Intellexa Alliance of spyware companies, which in turn was linked to the Intellexa Consortium, which was previously sanctioned by the US for its involvement in the infamous Predator spyware
Likewise, Italy's state-owned bank, Mediocredito Centrale, was found to have acted as a guarantor to a €2.5 million (c $2.9 million) loan to Dataflow Security, an Italy-based commercial spyware developer.
FTM said that it did not prove that any of the money, in any of the cases it found, was used to directly fund spyware development, although funding was provided in several instances.
The letter addressed to senior commissioners Henna Virkkunen (Finland), Michael McGrath (Ireland), and Piotr Serafin (Poland) – who oversee tech, justice, and anti-fraud respectively – requested greater transparency over how EU funds were distributed, among other matters.
Various questions were raised by the MEPs, such as how the European Commission verifies the integrity of the entities that receive EU funds, whether any risk assessments are carried out before investments are made to spyware companies, and how much money in total has been awarded to these organizations.
... continue reading