Cyprus state services were clients of Tal Dilian’s companies — Audit Service report

State services of the Republic of Cyprus signed contracts with companies belonging to Tal Dilian, a former Israeli intelligence officer whose business was built around developing and selling software for surveillance and telephone interception. This follows from a secret report by the Audit Service of Cyprus, the contents of which were published by the newspaper Politis.

According to the report, Dilian and his partner Avraham Sahak Avni built a network of Cypriot and foreign companies through which spyware was developed and sold. Auditors recorded a series of contracts between these firms and the republic’s services. In 2018, the Ministry of Commerce granted a company owned by Dilian, WS WiSpear Systems Ltd, a licence to export software for surveillance and interception purposes.

A separate section of the report concerns the Cyprus Police. The police chief initially denied that the department had purchased surveillance services, but two months later admitted that systems for extracting data and optical material had been acquired in 2011 and 2014.

The Audit Service handed the findings of its review to the Anti-Corruption Authority back in May 2023. The investigation is intended to establish why state institutions cooperated with Dilian’s companies and whether citizens, politicians and public officials were illegally surveilled. In Parliament, in November 2022 and June 2023, AKEL MP Aristos Damianou stated that Dilian’s clients included political parties and individual politicians.

Interest in the case was revived after a recent verdict in Athens, where Dilian was sentenced to eight years in prison for the illegal interception of conversations involving officials and political figures.