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The United Nations is set to support a claim that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone hacked by Saudi Arabia.
According to a report in The Guardian, the world's richest man received a WhatsApp message in 2018 that contained a malicious file, said to be from the personal account of the Saudi Arabian leader Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman.
Saudi Arabia
has called the claim "absurd", saying: "We call for an investigation on these claims so that we can have all the facts out."
Image:Jeff Bezos is the boss and founder of Amazon
UN officials are now set to reveal that it has found credible evidence to support claims of Saudi involvement in a forensic report commissioned by the Amazon chief.
The report, which was carried out by FTI Consulting, found that large amounts of data began leaving Mr Bezos' mobile phone a month after he received the file, said to be a video, according to The Guardian.
Experts working with the UN said that while the billionaire's case is not airtight, the evidence presented was strong enough to prompt a wider investigation.
David Kaye, the UN rapporteur for free expression, said he would be releasing a statement on Wednesday addressing the "very serious hacking allegations" made in the case.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and Mr Bezos were already strained following the
murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
in 2018, who wrote for the Washington Post - a newspaper owned by the Amazon boss.
Mr Khashoggi, who was sharply critical of the crown prince, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October that year.
Early in 2019, Mr Bezos suggested that Saudi Arabia was not happy with the Washington Post's reporting on the killing.
Jamal Khashoggi: How the journalist met his death
His security chief claims that during that time Saudi Arabia had
access to the businessman's phone
, and had even taken private messages between him and a television presenter, leading to a tabloid report suggesting the two were dating.
The kingdom denied the claims.
