The security chief for Amazon’s leader, Jeff Bezos, said that the Saudi authorities accessed Bezos’ cellphone and obtained non-public records.
Gavin De Becker, a longtime security consultant, said he had concluded his research into the guide in January of leaked text messages between Ambetweenezos and Lauren Sanchez, a former TV anchor who the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper stated Bezos turned into courting.
Last month, Bezos accused the newspaper’s owner of looking to blackmail him with the risk of publishing “intimate images” he allegedly sent to Sanchez, except he publicly stated that the tabloid’s reporting on him became no longer politically stimulated.
In a piece for The Daily Beast website, De Becker said the National Enquirer’s controlling enterprise, American Media Inc., had privately demanded that De Becker deny locating any evidence of “digital eavesdropping or hacking in their newsgathering method.”
“Our investigators and several professionals concluded with high self-belief that the Saudis had to get right of entry to Bezos’ telephone and gained non-public information,” De Becker wrote. “Nowadays, it’s miles unclear what diploma, if any, AMI changed into privy to the information.”
A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately return a request for comment. In February, the dominion’s minister of a nation for foreign affairs stated Saudi Arabia had “honestly nothing to do” with the National Enquirer’s reporting on the affair.
A representative for AMI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. AMI has previously stated that it acted lawfully in reporting the Bezos story. De Becker said he has not elaborated on his research findings to U.S. Federal officials.
