It seems that Omri Lavie has obtained ownership of the shares of a spyware company that is on the blacklist
Corporate filings in Luxembourg suggest that Omri Lavie, one of the founders of NSO Group, has gained control of the company’s shares after a legal battle over its future. Despite stepping back from day-to-day management in recent years, Lavie seems to have become the new majority owner through his investment firm, Dufresne Holding, which is currently the only owner of a Luxembourg-based holding company that owns NSO Group.
In 2021, the Biden administration added NSO to the “entities list” after discovering evidence that the company had supplied spyware to foreign governments. The spyware was then used to target a variety of individuals, including government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers. The decision was made in response to the Pegasus Project, an investigation by various media outlets, including The Guardian, which revealed numerous instances of abuse of NSO’s surveillance software by government clients across the globe. Organized by French non-profit Forbidden Stories, the project specifically focused on how NSO’s clients had used the software to target journalists.
NSO, which operates under strict regulation by the Israeli Ministry of Defence, maintains that it exclusively provides its primary surveillance software product, Pegasus, to government clients to combat serious crimes like terrorism. Additionally, the company claims that it has no authority over how government clients employ the surveillance tool after purchase. NSO has asserted that it takes serious allegations of government client abuse seriously and conducts thorough investigations. The company has also reported terminating its services to clients in the past.
Despite facing intense scrutiny in recent years, NSO still possesses a highly desirable product sought after by intelligence agencies and governments worldwide. In fact, even the FBI obtained a limited license for Pegasus in 2019, though they claim to have never utilized the surveillance software in their investigations and were only interested in studying it.
Last year, discussions between NSO and US defense contractor L3 Harris regarding a potential sale fell through due to concerns raised by the White House regarding the deal’s potential security implications.
Lavie’s decision to resign comes amidst ongoing legal battles between NSO and Treo, a US-based financial company that controls the majority stake in NSO.
According to Treo, NSO and its founders have consistently denied even basic corporate information to its fund, such as information related to the company’s compliance with US laws, whether Pegasus spyware was still being sold to high-risk customers, and what the company had done to address allegations of widespread misuse of its products. NSO has not yet responded to a request for comment.
The news was first reported by the Israeli outlet Calcalist, which stated that a district court in Tel Aviv was informed that the shares of the spyware company had been transferred by its lenders to a new holding company owned solely by Lavie. However, the article also suggested that additional directors would be added once a new group of investors were fully onboard.
