“The purchase of Hermes software was unfounded.” Prok. Bilewicz before the investigation commission
In 2020, the National Prosecutor's Office bought a Hermes program for collecting and analyzing information; In total, it cost PLN 15 million – said prosecutor Jacek Bilewicz before the investigation commission for Pegasus. In 2024, as a national prosecutor, he found the purchase unfounded and did not agree to extend the license.
Prok. In January 2024, Bilewicz was under the decision of the prime minister acting in the duties of a national prosecutor. He performed them until this function, in mid -March 2024, was taken over after the winning competition by prosecutor Dariusz Korneluk. Currently prosecutor Bilewicz is the deputy prosecutor general.
During the Thursday interrogation before the Sejm inquiry commission for Pegasus, Prosecutor Bilewicz told how in February 2024 he had a request to extend the license for the amount of PLN 2 million in his desk. It was about Hermes software. Bilewicz said that he demanded all the documentation related to the purchase of this program.
“Then it turned out that such a purchase was carried out in November 2020 and together, As for the amount of purchase and then the license to maintain this program during this period, it was a considerable amount of 15 million fromŁ. Therefore, I decided that after this circumstance I should notify the Prosecutor General and refused to extend this license ” – emphasized prosecutor Bilewicz.
The information obtained by Bilewicz showed that the analysis obtained using this software “was not used as evidence in the case”, but “to direct the conducted proceedings”. As he emphasized, in addition to open sources, the software “drew from the so -called darknet and leakage databases”, and the actions carried out on it were “the nature of the operational activity”. He added that such materials “cannot be evidence in a criminal case”.
“At the very beginning, as I demanded to present me such sample analyzes, I asked prosecutors to present to me this analysis that the court considered proof. I was not presented with such analyzes. However, I cannot say whether, as a result of the use of this software, someone, based on other evidence, was not charged” – clarified the prosecutor. “Therefore, starting from the issue of the legitimacy of this purchase, I decided that preparatory proceedings should be carried out in this case,” the prosecutor added.
The deputy head of the commission Witold Zembaczyński (KO) after the end of the meeting emphasized that “there are serious circumstantial evidence that at the time of expression of the Pegasus system, the environment of Zbigniew Ziobra and ministers of coordinators of special services (Maciej Wąsik and Mariusz Kamiński – PAP) sought some alternatives.” The chairwoman of the commission Magdalena Sroka (PSL) emphasized that “part of Hermes' orders was issued orally.” She added, which is why there is no knowledge, “who in what need was using this instrument.” She also pointed out that Hermes and Pegasus, was created by one manufacturer – NSO Group.
“The manufacturer of Hermes and Pegasus software was the same and today we know that the services, including the Military Counterintelligence Service, using Pegasus, wrote in her internal documents, (…) that the software manufacturer can have access to data by Pegasus obtained, i.e. they did not rule out these services that all the data lands somewhere at the very end,” said Sroka.
The investigation into the purchase and use of the Hermes system has been conducted for over a year, the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Rzeszów.
On November 20, 2020, the National Prosecutor's Office bought a system for PLN 15.56 million with a commercial name Hermes for analyzing data from open internet sources (OSINT). It was to serve as a tool supporting criminal analysis. The prosecutor's office used the software from January 19, 2021 to March 13, 2024. During this period, 398 criminal analyzes were performed.
The process of purchasing the Hermes system by PK in November 2020, as well as aspects of its use were controlled by the Supreme Audit Office. In March 2025, the Supreme Audit Office sent two notifications to the prosecutor's office of a reasonable suspicion of committing a crime. The first of them concerns the causation of property damage in large size and failure to do the obligation to conduct relevant analyzes before this purchase. Second – unauthorized secret of the accounting document before NIK controllers in the course of budget control in 2023.
The PEGASUS inquiry commission examines the legality, correctness and purposefulness of activities undertaken using this software, including By the government, special services and the police from November 2015 to November 2023, the Commission is also to determine who was responsible for the purchase of Pegasus and similar tools for Polish authorities.
Pegasus is a system that was created by the Israeli company NSO Group to fight terrorism and organized crime. With the help of Pegasus, you can not only eavesdrop on conversations from an infected smartphone, but also access to other data stored in it, e.g. emails, photos or video recordings, as well as cameras and microphones.
As the Canadian Citizen Lab established, the politicians of the opposition at that time were being underveted. One of the first people to be informed was Krzysztof Brejza, then a senator KO involved in the election campaign of his party in 2019 (PAP)
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