New Delhi: Pakistani geospatial firm Business Systems International Pvt Ltd (BSI) is no longer listed as a partner on the website of US satellite company Maxar Technologies. This change came hours after ThePrint published an exclusive report revealing that Maxar had been receiving orders for high-resolution satellite images of Pahalgam, ostensibly since June last year, when the Pakistani firm was onboarded as a partner. The orders peaked in February—two months before the 22 April terror attack.
Crucially, US authorities had earlier indicted BSI owner Obaidullah Syed for illegally exporting computer equipment and software solutions to Pakistani government agencies.
Maxar provides high-resolution satellite imagery to government bodies across the world, including India’s Ministry of Defence and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
While there is no evidence directly linking BSI to the Pahalgam image orders, Maxar’s ‘Find a Partner’ page no longer listed BSI shortly after ThePrint’s story was published.
BSI Pakistan had appeared as a partner on Maxar’s portal until 9 May, as shown in screenshots taken by ThePrint during its investigation. However, on Saturday—a day after the story was published—Maxar responded to ThePrint’s email sent on 6 May, claiming that the Pahalgam orders did not come from BSI.
“BSI has not placed any tasking orders with Maxar of Pahalgam or the surrounding areas this year, nor have they ordered any of the imagery we currently have of those areas through our imagery archive,” Tomi Maxted, Maxar’s head of corporate and product communications, wrote.
Significantly, hours after this email response, Maxar quietly removed BSI from its website. The Pakistani firm no longer appears as a listed partner.
ThePrint also sent a detailed questionnaire to Maxar—asking, among other things, whether BSI had been officially delisted—but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Also read: Orders for Pahalgam satellite images from US firm peaked two months before attack
Maxar and BSI
Maxar Technologies has over 120 private partners worldwide, including at least 11 Indian companies such as Antrix Corporation Ltd, CYRAN AI Solutions, Lepton Software, and Satpalda Geospatial Services. These partners help develop products, sell services, and represent Maxar in their respective regions.
BSI Pakistan was enlisted as a Maxar partner in 2023. ThePrint found that satellite image orders for Pahalgam began appearing on Maxar’s portal just months after BSI was brought on board.
After the story was published on 9 May, Maxar stated that BSI had not “tasked” the Pahalgam orders. However, it did not clarify why the Pakistani firm had been onboarded in the first place despite its owner’s criminal record. Nor did the company respond to questions about whether a background check was conducted.
BSI owner Obaidullah Syed, a Pakistani-American businessman, was sentenced by a US federal court in 2022 to one year in prison for illegally exporting high-performance computer equipment to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC)—the agency responsible for designing and testing high explosives and nuclear weapon components, as well as developing solid-fuelled ballistic missiles.
(Edited by Prashant)
Thank you for this investigation. This is huge and should be picked up by our government.
Soumya, Good find!
Did you look up the other partner of Maxar for Pakistan, i.e., Dubai based “Space Imaging Middle East” (SIME) ?
Some of the trivia is intriguing.
SIME is also (primarily) Maxar’s partner in the ME, except for Saudi Arabia.
Maxar has no partner listed for Saudi Arabia. Nor for China. (Though, I have seen a couple of internet pages which list Maxar as being a popular vendor in China.)
SIME began in 1997, as “partner” of one of the progenitors of Maxar. It must have been EarthWatch Inc, which had resulted earlier from a merger by WorldView Imaging Corporation.
EarthWatch became DigitalGlobe in Sept. 2001. (I am unable to catch what seems to be just around the corner of my mind when I look at that calendar month.)
In the meantime, SIME had set up a sister concern in Munich, Germany, which established a relationship with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). It began operating a Direct Access Facility (DAF) in one of DLR’s center, for satellite tasking and data downlinking for WorldView satellites.
Was the tasking order placed by/through SIME?
At some point, SIME’s sister concern became “European Space Imaging”, which was latter rebranded as EUSI.
To get even closer to each other, SIME, EUSI, and DigitalGlobe formed a Global WorldView Alliance for providing end-to-end imagery solutions and services.
(Info obtained from the company websites and Wikipedia pages.)
It all made for a pleasant evening of aimless wanderings.
That they removed the information about the Pakistani firm after the original article gained traction, is highly suspicious. Typical warmonger behaviour…sell to the highest bidder, money only matters. Someday, this will come back to bite them in the posterior. I would like to commend the Print for publishing this story and creating awareness about issues like these.
Great great research and article. THANKYOU SO MUCH @ThePrint, @soumya pillai.