Romania accuses Israelis of threatening, hacking official’s email
Published April 6, 2016
(JTA) — Romanian prosecutors issued a warrant for the arrest of a Belgian Jew whom they said had spied with Israelis on an anti-fraud official for a firm previously headed by a former head of the Mossad.
Justice ministry prosecutors in Bucharest signed the warrant for David Geclowicz’s arrest on April 3, according to a report published Tuesday on the blog Rise Project. It said he had illegally spied on Laura Kovesi Codruţa, a prosecutor of Romania’s National Anti-Corruption Directorate.
Geclowicz, according to the warrant, worked for Black Cube, an Israeli firm founded in 2010 whose honorary chair was the late Mossad director Meir Dagan, who died last month. Geclowicz, 24, already has been arrested along with another employee, Ron Weiner, according to Rise Project.
In a statement Wednesday, Black Cube confirmed their arrest but denied any wrongdoing, saying their actions were commissioned by elements associated with the government to investigate corruption.
”In recent weeks the company has been carrying out out a project on behalf of government associates in Romania to collect proof of serious corruption in the Romanian government system. In the context of this project, two employees who made serious advances in the case were arrested,” the statement read. “The employees were following the law and the suspicions against them are false. We are confident that the truth will be made clear in the coming days and the two will be released.”
The warrant said the employees, along with Black Cube co-founders Avi Zorella and Dan Yanus, were “part of an organized group determined to commit numerous offenses of harassment and related offenses including making multiple threat calls” and cyber-attacks to “illegally gain access credentials and subsequently compromise email accounts, an activity that was followed by unlawful violation of the secrecy of the correspondence.”
Black Cube’s offices in Israel, Britain and France were not immediately reachable for comment.
Daniel Horotniceanu, a prosecutor working on the case, told Rise Project the investigation was in its preliminary stages.
