It has been revealed that Alexandre Benalla, Macron’s intimate security agent and mission confidant, played a crucial role in connecting Nexa, a French cybersecurity business that sells the espionage program “Predator,” with Saudi Arabian officials. This revelation–made public on Thursday– originates from an investigation conducted by Mediapart, Spiegel, LeSoir and a consortium of European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) media outlets.
According to the results of the query, Benalla was involved in 499 WhatsApp chats with Nexa.
Nexa–known for selling the Predator spyware to authoritarian regimes–has been under investigation since 2018 for “complicity in torture” related to the sale of internet surveillance systems to Libya and Egypt in 2006 and 2014, respectively.
Nexa’s link with French authorities has provided its leaders with access to the highest levels of government–as indicated by phone numbers uncovered in Nexa’s office notebook page dated April 14, 2018–including those of security figures Alexandre Benalla and Eric Bio-Farina, or possibly even Emmanuel Macron himself.
Benalla and Oliver Bohbot, Nexa’s second-in-command, exchanged 499 WhatsApp messages between June 2020 and June 2021, exposing Benalla’s involvement in arranging a meeting between Bohbot and a Saudi official tied to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been implicated in the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
While the outcome of the discussions is not yet certain, Nexa has clearly been targeting the Saudi market for a considerable duration. Documents in the “Predator Files” show previous encounters with Riyadh.
Data has shown Nexa’s intent to secure a deal with a Malaysian business–Gamma International Limited–with the intention of offering various services to Saudi Arabia’s “Royal Court,” most notably intrusion systems and spyware solutions similar to Predator and AlphaSpear.
Following scrutiny at Nexa, judges demanded that their inquiry be expanded to include ‘’complicity in torture in Saudi Arabia;’’ however, the prosecutor denied these requests.
When contacted for comment, neither the Élysée, Alexandre Benalla, nor Nexa shareholder Renaud Roques responded. Stéphane Salies and Olivier Bohbot maintain that they did not pay Alexandre Benalla or enter into a contract with him.
Benalla was sentenced on appeal, Friday, September 29, in Paris to three years of imprisonment, including one year with an adjustable sentence, in the case of the violence of May 1, 2018, a sentence identical to that pronounced at first instance.
He was also found guilty of fraudulently using diplomatic passports, fabricating false documents, and illegal possession of a weapon in 2017.