Chief of Pegasus firm to step down

The chief executive of the Israeli spyware company NSO Group is stepping down as part of a corporate reorganisation to focus on business with member countries of Nato, the company said in a statement on Sunday.

The reorganisation comes after the US government blacklisted the NSO Group last November over its spyware Pegasus.

When announcing the blacklisting, the Biden administration said that NSO Group had acted “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”

The move, which barred American companies from doing any business with the Israeli firm, followed reports by a coalition of news organizations last July that governments used Pegasus to target journalists, dissidents and opposition politicians in countries including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Mexico.