Polish state auditor has invoice showing purchase of spyware used against opposition

Poland’s state auditor says recent revelations that opposition figures had their devices hacked with military-grade spyware is “one of the most serious crises of democracy” in Poland.

Marian Banaś, president of the Supreme Audit Office (NIK), notes that his organisation has previously found an invoice showing that the authorities purchased the Pegasus spyware in question from its Israeli producer. He says that, in light of recent developments, NIK may reopen an investigation.

Separately, this morning a leading daily newspaper published claims that Pegasus had been purchased illegally by the government in 2017. Those allegations have been dismissed by government figures.

Two weeks ago, Associated Press reported that a Polish politician was hacked multiple times using Pegasus while he was running the opposition’s 2019 election campaign. A lawyer who has represented opposition leaders and a prosecutor critical of the government’s judicial policies were also spied on.

Poland’s government has previously refused to confirm or deny reports that it had bought the spyware, which has been used by a number of authoritarian governments to spy on journalists, activists, lawyers and opposition politicians.

In 2018, NIK found that 33.4 million zloty had been used to purchase a surveillance system for the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA). Most of the money had come from a justice ministry fund to support victims of crime and rehabilitate criminals, which the auditors found was an illegitimate use of that fund.

Though NIK at the time did not name Pegasus specifically as the system purchased, that fact was widely reported by the media and opposition politicians. Now Banaś has confirmed that NIK “found an invoice for the purchase of the Pegasus system”.

He added that the recent revelations regarding use of the spyware represent “a serious threat to democracy and require a special explanation because they concern the suspicion of illegal surveillance of politicians and citizens”.

Banaś noted that NIK has received a number of requests to carry out new inspections relating to Pegasus, and that it will analyse them then decide how best to proceed.

The NIK president was previously a member of the government, but has since become one of its leading opponents. A number of his body’s audits have alleged violations of the law by officials, including one that accused the justice ministry of allowing its fund to become a “corruption-generating mechanism”.

This morning, Gazeta Wyborcza – a leading liberal daily that is critical of the government – published a report, based on inside sources and official material obtained by an opposition politician, about how the CBA “illegally” purchased Pegasus in 2017.

The newspaper claims that the decision to sell Pegasus to Poland and Hungary – whose government has been accused of using it to spy on journalists – was made at a meeting between the two countries’ prime ministers and their Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, in July 2017

The system was then purchased using the justice ministry’s fund, even though by law the CBA should be financed only directly from the state budget. A document obtained by the newspaper shows that the finance ministry found this to be a “violation of financial discipline” but decided it was not severe enough to merit action.

Figures linked to the justice ministry quickly responded to Gazeta Wyborcza’s story by claiming that the report was a rehashing of accusations that had been aired, analysed and dismissed previously.

“The opposition’s ‘revelations’ regarding the transfer of funds from the Justice Fund to the CBA turned out to be a dud,” tweeted Michał Wójcik, who was a deputy justice minister from 2016 to 2020 and is now a minister in the prime minister’s chancellery. “The topic was discussed in parliament four years ago. There is nothing new.”

Michał Woś, a current deputy justice minister, likewise noted that the issue had been discussed in parliament four years ago. He added that the Justice Fund “has a statutory obligation to finance the fight against crime, so that those who break the law do not sleep peacefully”.

Radosław Fogiel, a spokesman for the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, told Radio Zet this morning that Gazeta Wyborcza is not a reliable source. “How can I be sure that one of the authors did not find an old Pegasus games console [a Nintendo clone common in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s] in the attic and got confused,” he joked.

The opposition, however, has argued that the latest revelations further deepen what they say is a major scandal involving the illegal use of state resources to purchase spyware that was itself illegitimately used for political purposes against opponents of the government.

In response to Woś and Wójcik’s remarks, Katarzyna Lubnauer, leader of the liberal Modern (Nowoczesna) party, noted that, while parliament had discussed this issue four years ago, “at that time PiS did not say Pegasus was to be used to surveil the opposition in order to win elections”.

“There is no longer any doubt that extremely foul-smelling deeds were done,” Donald Tusk, leader of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), told TVN24 yesterday. “This is just the beginning [of the scandal],” he declared, repeating the opposition’s calls for a parliamentary inquiry to be held.

A poll by SW Research for the centre-right Rzeczpospolita daily, published yesterday, found that 43% of Poles favour setting up such an inquiry while 20% are opposed to the idea. The remaining 37% did not have an opinion.

Main image credit: Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.