Report from former MT CTO: “They use their equipment to do data retrieval”

Posted On: July 23, 2022

In a report submitted on 12 July to Michel Degland, Mauritius Telecom’s Acting Chief Executive Officer, Girish Guddoy, who resigned from his position as the company’s Chief Technical Officer on Tuesday, 19 July, stated that the Indian technical team was connected to the network from the Landing Station. Baie-du-Jacotet and allegedly carried out “data collection”.

Are there any contradictions between the different versions? While the Prime Minister, Pravind Jugnauth, stated “that no equipment was installed at Baie-du-Jacotet Landing Station to ‘sniff’ or to intercept Internet traffic”, (Editor’s Note, Response to PNQ last Tuesday in Parliament), Girish version Guddoy, the resigned Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of Mauritius Telecom *MT), seems to give another interpretation.

In a report sent on July 12 at 5:52 p.m. to Michel Degland, MT’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and Velamah Cathapermal-Nair, MT’s Chief Legal & Regulatory Officer, Girish Guddoy wrote that the technical experts, dispatched from India, were connected to the network and retrieve data. To achieve that, according to him, they use their own equipment.

“Two minutes on each of these links”

“The survey was conducted using their tool which was connected to the different Internet links we have on SAFE cable and they performed a two-minute data retrieval on each of these links,” he wrote in his report. And he specified: “after data retrieval is complete, the used tool is deleted”.

In its report, the CTO relates that “on April 14, 2022, around noon, I received a call from our then CEO, Mr Sherry Singh, who asked me to meet him in his office on the 18th floor of the TelecomTower. I went there and met him in his office. before moving to the Council Room, where two people were present. One was a total stranger to me and the second was Mr Deeal from the Counter Terrorism Unit”.

This second person was Lilram Deeal, the officer in charge of this department who was under the responsibility of the Prime Minister’s Office.

A report signed by Girish Guddoy on 12 July 2022 evoked data retrieval on 15 April 2022.

Rejection and end of meeting

Girish Guddoy explained in his report that guide Lilram Deeal “demonstrated that he was Indian and made a request to visit Baie-du-Jacotet Landing Station to conduct a survey”. This landing station is where the SAFE underwater optical cable terminates. Most Mauritius internet traffic goes through this cable to go international.

In his report, the former CTO stated that “the CEO asked about the nature of the survey and he mentioned that he wanted to get information about the type of traffic. I replied that our traffic mix is the same as anywhere else in the world. The stranger then said that he wanted to take a two-minute sample of our Internet traffic at the Baie-du-Jacotet Landing Station. The CEO refused and the meeting ended.”

In his report, Girish Guddoy points out that on April 15 at around 10:30 am, Sherry Singh called him to inform him that “the survey discussed the day before should be conducted. The CEO instructed me to accompany the India team.”

As a reminder, the former CEO of MT received a call from the Prime Minister on the morning of April 15th. Moreover, Pravind Jugnauth emphasized in response to a parliamentary question posed to him by Labor MPs Ehsan Juman and Patrick Assirvaden on 12 July. The Head of Government stated that “on the morning of April 15, 2022, I was informed that Mauritius Telecom had not made the necessary arrangements for the team to have access to the Landing Station at Baie-du-Jacotet for a survey. So I called the CEO and asked him to arrange a survey that would be conducted. He finally agreed to allow the team access. On the same day, the CEO asked Mauritius Telecom’s CTO to accompany a delegation to Baie-du-Jacotet for an on-site survey.” Pravind Jugnauth and Girish Guddoy’s version corroborates this.

Visit

Girish Guddoy, in his report sent on July 12 to Acting CEO MT, mentioned that he coordinated with Lilram Deeal to bring a team of experts to Baie-du-Jacotet sent by India following a request made by the Prime Minister of Mauritius for his Indian counterpart, Narendra. fashion. Girish Guddoy admitted that he was accompanied by another engineer from MT. He did not reveal his identity.

On site, as agreed, the Indian team has access to equipment to conduct surveys. However, the former CTO did not say how long the exercise would last. In her statement to the press, Sherry Singh stated that the duration was about six hours.

The question that arises is whether the ex-CTO contradicted him over the letter he sent to Nayen Koomar Ballah, then president of MT – he resigned from this function on Wednesday 20 July. In this correspondence, Girish Guddoy stated that “we all left the place after the survey at around 7:15 pm without installing any sniffing equipment or the like there. As MT’s CTO, I realize there are no plans to install any sniffing devices” at Baie-du-Jacotet Landing Station. However, in his July 12 report, he mentioned that a device had been plugged into the network, but was later removed.

It turns out that the Central Criminal Investigation Department (CCID), which is investigating the whole matter following the statement made by the Prime Minister on 11 July, intends to immediately question Girish Guddoy to take a closer look at the whole question.