NSO CEO Denies Pegasus Targeted World Leaders, Contradicting Investigation Claims

"We can confirm that at least three names in your investigation: Emmanuel Macron, King Mohammed VI and [The WHO DG] Tedros Ghebreyesus - are not, and have never been, targets or selected as targets of NSO Group’s customers," said Shalev Hulio, stating that the disclosed list of 50,000 numbers is not a list of numbers selected for surveillance using Pegasus.

In a correspondence addressed to a partner of the Pegasus project, Thomas Clare, one of the lawyers of the Israeli company NSO, provided clarification on the issue. "This is a list of numbers that anyone can search on an open source system for reasons other than Pegasus surveillance. The fact that a number appears on this list in no way indicates whether that number has been selected for Pegasus surveillance," he explained.