German prosecutors have charged four ex-managing directors at Munich-based technology company FinFisher for allegedly selling restricted software to a Turkish government agency without an export license.
The Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office announced the charges on 22 May after filing them three weeks earlier. Prosecutors allege that the defendants helped FinFisher, which filed for insolvency in 2022, sell commercial spyware to the Turkish secret service for €5 million in 2015.
Since 2015, European Union rules have limited the sale of spyware programmes such as FinSpy – which allows users to take control of a target’s device and secretly monitor ongoing communications – to a small group of countries outside the bloc that does not include Turkey. Prosecutors allege that the former FinFisher executives, who were only identified by the initials G, H, T and D, tried to circumvent the EU export controls by listing a Bulgarian subsidiary as the seller of the software and a fake Turkish customs agency as the purchaser.
The public prosecutor’s office said it has carried out searches on 15 homes and offices in Munich and Romania as part of the investigation and sent information requests to authorities in Sweden, Cyprus, Malaysia, Bulgaria and Romania.
Munich prosecutors opened their investigation following a complaint in 2019 from four non-governmental organisations that accused the Turkish government of using FinSpy to track political dissidents. The groups believed they had uncovered links designed to trick people into downloading the spyware buried in a fake website for the Turkish opposition in 2017.
“So far companies like FinFisher have been able to export their products worldwide virtually unhindered, despite European export regulations,” said the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, one of the groups that filed the complaint, in a 2022 statement responding to FinFisher’s insolvency. “The criminal investigations were long overdue and will hopefully lead to the swift indictment and conviction of the responsible business executives,” it added.
FinFisher could not be reached for comment.
The Turkish embassy in Germany has been contacted for comment.
