BAKU/ALMATY/JULY 18 2021 (The Bulletin) –Officials in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have been using the Pegasus Israeli spyware to eavesdrop on opposition journalists and politicians, as well as senior members of the Kazakh elite including President Kassym Jomart Tokayev.

The Berlin-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) said in its dossier, entitled “A World of Surveillance”, that Azerbaijan had targeted 1,000 people and Kazakhstan had targeted 2,000 people. 

The accusations were based on information from a whistleblower at Israeli company NSO Group which manufactured Pegasus for clients across the world. Most of the targets in Azerbaijan were journalists and politicians, including investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilov, who works for OCCRP.

“Secretive government surveillance doesn’t only affect the target,” she said. “My sources, my family, and my friends have also been swept up in the state’s campaign against me.”

The OCCRP said that the Pegasus spyware could read messages, eavesdrop on phone calls and act as a microphone to record conversations. 

Pegasus’ targets in Kazakhstan included journalists, as well as Pres. Tokayev, successor to Nursultan Nazarbayev, PM Askar Mamin and businessman Bulat Utemuratov. 

“The dozens of numbers suggest that the entire Nazarbayev regime, practically from top to bottom, was being spied on — most likely by its own security services,” the OCCRP said. It is not clear when the surveillance was ordered or by whom.

ENDS

— This story was published in issue 493 of the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin, on July 22 2021

— Copyright the Central Asia & South Caucasus Bulletin 2021