Following extensive discussions about the breach of the Lebanese telecommunications network by Israel, as well as a network connected to airport devices, previous investigations that have not yet revealed their results showed that a foreign company named ACUATIVE (most of its executives hold Israeli citizenship) was contracted by former Minister of Telecommunications Jamal Al-Jarrah and his advisor Nabil Yamout in 2018. The contract was not recorded in accordance with regulations at the time and has remained secret to this date. Meetings occurred with the foreign company’s staff in Al-Jarrah's office, with Yamout present, alongside some directors from the ministry and OGERO, as reported by "An-Nahar."
Due to the extensive powers granted to the company, several directors at OGERO expressed reservations about handing over confidential information, engineering maps, passwords, operating data, and operational systems to the mentioned company, considering it would expose the Lebanese communications network and its secrets to a foreign company intending to transfer all this information out of Lebanon. However, the company eventually obtained all the requested information.
The company is American and specializes in digital service networks; it has never operated in Lebanon and does not appear in the Lebanese commercial registry, making direct contracting with it by the Ministry of Telecommunications unjustifiable. Nevertheless, Al-Jarrah and his advisor reached a mutual agreement with the company to study the designs of the Lebanese internet network and conduct a technical audit and analysis of all its equipment, without presenting this agreement to the Court of Accounts or routing it through OGERO, thus keeping it a secret agreement.
However, the Minister of Telecommunications at the time denied knowledge of the risks associated with contracting the American company and expressed astonishment at not having been informed of a letter from the former Director of Information Technology, Tawfiq Shbaro, who warned against handing the company data related to the Lebanese network due to the sensitive information it contained, according to "An-Nahar."
