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Israeli report implicates Cyprus in spying equipment sale to Bangladesh

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It seems that Israeli-Cyprus relations will need to overcome a major hurdle following a Haaretz investigative report claiming that a sale of advanced phone tapping and other spying tools to Bangladesh, a Muslim country having no diplomatic relations with Israel, went through Cyprus and Greece.

According to the daily’s coverage, a Swiss firm sold a phone tapping system to the third largest Muslim country in the world, in spite of its ‘recorded violations of human rights’.

The system was supplied recently to the Bangladeshi interior ministry, the local secret service and armed forces using Cypriot and Greek channels as there was no direct sale option due to the two countries having no relations.

Haaretz reporters Yaron and Khan named the company as Toru Group Limited, with Israeli national Asaf Elias being the CEO of the firm, according to three unnamed independent sources claiming that he had acted as a middleman in major spying equipment deals with spyware companies belonging to one Tar Dilian, implicated in a major spying van case running in Cyprus, with political dimensions.

The report also links the Bangladesh spyware sale to Passitora (formerly known as Wispear), a company registered in Cyprus and also named in the van case.

‘Export records show that in June 2022, a Spearhead system was delivered from Switzerland to Bangladesh capital Dhaka, with the supplier being Passitora and the buyer revealed as the National Centre of Communications Control’, Haaretz reports, adding that the 991 kilograms shipment including wire tapping software and hardware was estimated at 5,7 million dollars.

According to the Haaretz sources, Bangladeshi officials travelled to Gerede in 2021 and 2022 and received training on the system.

UTX, in Israeli firm registered in Cyprus, is also named as providing spyware to Bangladesh, including the Web Intelligence system, estimated at 2 million dollars and delivered in 2019.

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