US consultants line up to run fund owning Israeli spyware firm NSO | Supervision

A person familiar with the matter told the Guardian that the talks, which are at an early stage, followed an internal dispute between the co-founders of Novalpina Capital, whose fund NSO Group acquired in 2019.

NSO Group was at the center of a massive surveillance scandal after the publication of the Pegasus Project, an investigation into NSO by 17 media organizations. At the heart of the investigation was a leak of tens of thousands of phone numbers of individuals, including journalists, activists, lawyers and heads of state allegedly listed as individuals of interest for possible surveillance by government clients of NSOs.

The publication of the study by the Guardian and other media organizations came as the three co-founders of Novalpina were already embroiled in a long-running dispute over the future of the fund.

This week, Sky News and the Financial Times reported that Novalpina had lost control of its own fund as a result of the internal dispute, which took control of the funds outside of investors.

The intervention left the property of NSO and an Estonian gambling company called Olympic Entertainment Group, as well as other assets at stake.

The FT reported that the funds outside of investors, including public pension funds in the US and the UK, had until August 6 to decide whether to liquidate the fund through asset looting or appoint a third party to take control of the fund. take over the fund.

A person close to the matter told the Guardian that the fund’s largest investor, the Oregon Public Retirement Fund, initiated the transfer of management of the Novalpina fund to US-based BRG.

Novalpina declined to comment. NSO declined to comment. BRG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The deal isn’t finalized yet. The Israeli government, which closely monitors NSO and the export of its surveillance technology, would likely have a say in transferring management of the fund NSO owns to another company.

According to its website, BRG is a global consulting firm that helps organizations move forward in three key areas: litigation and investigations, corporate finance and performance improvement.

If the deal goes through, the California-based company would take over the fund NSO owns at a difficult time for the Israeli company. The French government has called for an investigation into allegations that NSO clients had listed key government officials, including most of Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet, as persons of interest. In the US, a senior Biden government official involved in national security has also expressed concern over the revelations of the Pegusus project to an Israeli official.

The Pegasus project was organized by Forbidden Stories, a French media organization.

Forensic analysis of dozens of phones by Amnesty International’s Security Lab, a technical partner of the Pegasus project, found that many of the phones analyzed on the leaked list were either infected with NSO’s spyware called Pegasus, or attempted were taken to prevent infections.

When NSO’s Pegasus spyware infects a phone, government customers using it can access a person’s phone calls, messages, photos and location, turning the phone into a portable listening device by manipulating the recorder.

The leak contains a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers believed to have been identified as persons of interest by NSO customers since 2016.

The appearance of a number on the leaked list does not mean that an attempted or successful hacking has taken place. NSO said President Macron was not targeted by any of his clients, meaning: the company denies that there has been an attempted or successful Pegasus infection of its phone.

NSO has also said the data is not relevant to the company and has dismissed the reporting by the Pegasus project as full of false assumptions and unconfirmed theories. It denied that the leaked data was the target of surveillance by the Pegasus software. NSO called the number of 50,000 exaggerated and said it was too large to represent individuals targeted by Pegasus.