Swiss and Austrian authorities are investigating claims of potential espionage during recent nuclear talks between Iran and world powers including the United States, officials said Thursday.
An Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman, Karl-Heinz Grundböck, would give no further details but said “all relevant locations” were being investigated.
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland said in a statement that it had “opened criminal proceedings against persons unknown on suspicion of political espionage.”
A house was searched on May 12 in Geneva, it said, “and IT hardware as well as software has been seized. The aim of the aforementioned house search was to seize respective information as well as the malware; it was of particular interest to investigate whether the malware infected the respective IT systems.”
Neither country has said who it believes to be behind the suspected espionage.
The Wall Street Journal reported in March that Israel had obtained confidential information about the closed-door negotiations to help it argue against a potential deal.
Israel strongly denied the report, however.
“These allegations are utterly false,” a senior official in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office told CNN. “The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel’s other allies.”
The Israeli government’s use of the information it allegedly gleaned — sharing it with U.S. lawmakers and others to undercut support for a deal — was what really angered the White House, The Journal reported, citing current and former U.S. officials.
The talks involved the so-called P5+1, made up of the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, across the table from Iran.
The negotiations, which wrapped up in the Swiss city of Lausanne in early April, resulted in a framework deal that was backed by the White House but opposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many in the U.S. Congress.
The parties have until the end to June to work out the details and put the plan to paper.