Former Polish official indicted over spyware purchase
Poland’s former deputy justice minister was indicted on Tuesday for allegedly illegally transferring $6.9 million from a fund meant to help crime victims to a Polish government office which used the money to purchase powerful commercial spyware.
Michał Woś faces a possible 10-year prison sentence for facilitating the transfer, which prosecutors say took place in 2017.
The charges are the latest development in a long-running Polish investigation into the use of the NSO Group’s zero-click Pegasus spyware to snoop on opposition politicians between 2017 and 2022.
In April, 2024 Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk announced that nearly 600 people there were targeted with Pegasus under the former ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party of which Woś is a member.
Woś defended himself in a social media post Tuesday.
“Pegasus was used to fight crime, so that Tusk [and justice minister Waldemar] Żurek [have an] allergy to such equipment is not surprising,” he wrote on X. “Just as criminals dislike the police, criminals of all stripes dislike crime detection tools.”
Suzanne Smalley
is a reporter covering privacy, disinformation and cybersecurity policy for The Record. She was previously a cybersecurity reporter at CyberScoop and Reuters. Earlier in her career Suzanne covered the Boston Police Department for the Boston Globe and two presidential campaign cycles for Newsweek. She lives in Washington with her husband and three children.