In a decision of great importance for Cyprus as well, the The 2nd Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Athens found Tal Dilian and three other defendants guilty for illegal phone surveillance via Predator software. The sentencing of Dilian to a prison sentence (suspended pending appeal) is the first substantial judicial “punishment” of the businessman, who in the past had managed to “avoid” criminal consequences in Cyprus for the case of the spy van.
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Businessmen Tal Dilian, Felix Biggio, Yiannis Lavranos and Sara Alexandra Hamou were found guilty of a series of misdemeanors, including:
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Illegal access to information systems and data.
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Violation of privacy of telephone communication and oral conversations.
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Interference with personal data filing systems.
The court imposed a total prison sentence of 126 years and 8 months, with 8 years suspended. Despite the size of the sentence, the convicts were granted a stay pending the hearing of the case in the second degree, while all requests for mitigation were rejected.
The rationale for the decision
According to the president of the court, Nikos Askianakis, it was proven that the defendants acted with common intent and co-decision, organizing a network of illegal access to private communications. Of the 116 acts examined, the court found actual confluence of crimes for 87 victims. In fact, three cases that were initially prosecuted as attempts were upgraded to completed acts, as it emerged that the victims activated the “tainted” links. On the contrary, for 108 victims who did not submit the relevant summons, the criminal prosecution was definitively terminated.
What happened in Cyprus?
In Cyprus, businessman Tal Dilian became known through his highly acclaimed case of a “spy van” in Larnaca, in 2019. While in Athens the judiciary proceeded to convict natural persons, in Cyprus the case had a completely different and controversial outcome.
The chronicle of events in Cyprus began in August 2019, when Tal Dilian gave an interview to the magazine Forbesshowing off a state-of-the-art van from his company, the WiSpear, which was capable of eavesdropping on mobile phone communications within a 500m radius. After the intense reactions, in November 2019 the Cypriot authorities proceeded to seize the vehicle and start investigations, proceeding to the arrest of three employees of the company, while an arrest warrant was also issued against Dilian himself, who was abroad.
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The case took on new dimensions in December 2021, when the Data Protection Commissioner imposed an administrative fine of €925,000 on WiSpear, as the investigation proved that the van had been used to illegally collect MAC addresses and Wi-Fi network names from thousands of unsuspecting citizens and tourists at Larnaca Airport. Despite these findings, in February 2022, when the case was referred to the Criminal Court, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Cyprus decided to suspend the criminal prosecution against Tal Dilian and the other natural persons.
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The final outcome in Cyprus was for the prosecution to continue only against the company as a legal entity, which pleaded guilty to 42 counts of breach of privacy and personal data, with the court ultimately imposing a fine of €76,000.