Law enforcement has discovered surveillance equipment throughout Odesa International Airport, a major Ukrainian travel hub just outside the southern, Black Sea port city. Prosecutors and investigators say that it is illegal.
But the airport and the IT company that was carrying out the surveillance claim everything was legal and above board.
Now, criminal proceedings have been initiated under a law regulating the illegal use of special technical equipment for obtaining information, prosecutors say.
The authorities claim that a private IT company based in Odesa that provides IT services to the airport abused its position and engaged in long-standing, secretive surveillance.
The company and its staff “organized long-term surveillance and the recording of service-related and commercial activities of the airport, including the construction of a new runway, while using more than 50 IT gadgets,” reads a May 31 statement from the Odesa Oblast Office of the Public Prosecutor.
The prosecutor’s office and the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, jointly discovered the alleged illegal activities. Law enforcement did not immediately reveal the name of the company they accuse of bugging Odesa airport.
However, Oleksandr Derevyanko, a spokesperson for the airport, told the Kyiv Post that it was an Odesa-based, Ukrainian IT company called Profi-IT. He also defended the company against allegations of wrongdoing and indicated that the airport planned to stand by the firm. He declined to comment further.
In a short written statement published on Facebook, the Profi-IT firm denied any wrongdoing. It confirmed that it was undertaking surveillance at the airport, but under contract and by legal means, the company said.
Oleksiy Babel, an Odesa-based lawyer who said he had been hired by Profi-IT on May 31, told the Kyiv Post that his client had been working at the airport for one year and was tasked with organizing surveillance for the airport. He denied his client had done anything illegal, and said that all its equipment was freely available on the Ukrainian market and not illicit. He did not comment further.
Law enforcement agencies allege that the company in question had “an opportunity for prohibited access to surveillance cameras in border guards’ offices, customs area, cash desks, accountancy, personal search rooms, offices of the airport employees.”
Moreover, the company had access to the cameras of the airport VIP lounge, where Ukrainian and foreign officials often visit, prosecutors said.
The SBU and local prosecutors said they intervened on the basis of a Ukrainian law prohibiting the secret collection of information. State agencies are also looking into whether data obtained by illegal means had been sold, they said.
Law enforcement agents searched the premises of the airport, of the accused company, and the private premises of the company’s employees.
Odesa airport is a public-private partnership that is owned by the city but has local, private investors. It says it serves 800,000 passengers per year and plans to launch more flights from its new terminal by September 2019.
