The security chief for Amazon leader government Jeff Bezos said on Saturday that the Saudi authorities had access to Bezos’ cellphone and won non-public records from it.
Gavin De Becker, a longtime security consultant, said he had concluded his research into the guide in January of leaked text messages among Bezos 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 stated in public that the tabloid’s reporting on him became no longer politically stimulated.
In a piece of writing for The Daily Beast internet site, De Becker said the determine enterprise of the National Enquirer, 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. “As of nowadays, it’s miles unclear to 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 at the affair.
A representative for AMI did no longer immediately respond to a request for comment. AMI has previously stated that it acted lawfully within the reporting of the Bezos story.
De Becker said he has turned over the findings of his research to U.S. Federal officials, without elaborating.
