The US imposed personal sanctions on Tal Dilian, a former senior IDF military intelligence officer who was behind the offensive cyber corporations Cytrox and Intellexa, developers of the surveillance malware Predator, Oded Yaron and Omer Benjakob reported in Haaretz on March 5.
The US Treasury announced that its “Office of Foreign Assets Control designated two individuals and five entities associated with the Intellexa Consortium for their role in developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology used to target Americans, including US government officials, journalists, and policy experts.”
The sanctions, the first to be imposed on Israeli individuals, mandate the freezing of all assets belonging to Dilian, Dilian’s ex-wife Sara Hemo, his father-in-law, and affiliated companies in the US or under U.S. citizens’ control. Any business affiliations must be disclosed to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, overseeing the US Department of Commerce’s blacklist. Additionally, US citizens are barred from engaging in any business transactions with Dilian or his companies unless granted special permission.
Financial institutions, companies, and individuals who continue to conduct business with Dilian, through payments or donations, may also face sanctions.
Sanctions have been levied on five additional business entities within the Intellexa Consortium, four of which were previously listed in the US Commerce Department’s Entity List last year. These entities include Intellexa in Greece, which exports spyware tools to undemocratic regimes; Intellexa Limited in Ireland, marketing surveillance tools; Cytrox in North Macedonia and its subsidiary Cytrox Holdings in Hungary, which developed the Predator spyware; and Thalestris, the consortium’s parent holding company.
Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson, stated, “Today’s actions represent a tangible step forward in discouraging the misuse of commercial surveillance tools, which increasingly present a security risk to the United States and our citizens. The US remains focused on establishing clear guardrails for the responsible development and use of these technologies while also ensuring the protection of human rights and civil liberties of individuals around the world.”
