French investigators have uncovered a "third party" suspected of being able to withhold the technical data of the route taken by the missing Malaysian plane, while intercepting a number of curious passengers aboard the plane.
Gislin Waterloos, a French national who lost his wife and two teenage children aboard the MH370, revealed the new developments after meeting with judges overseeing the investigations last week.
Waterloos said he had learned that the French team found "discrepancies" in the official report of the Malaysian investigation and identified "curious" passengers to be investigated.
These include a Malaysian aeronautics and air navigation specialist who works directly in the satellite communication unit of the flight and is likely to have technical knowledge to penetrate and conceal aircraft communication systems.
The French army investigation unit is investigating satellite and other technical data used by Australia's Transport Safety Bureau to chart the flight to a remote location south of the Indian Ocean where it is believed to have crashed in 2014 with 239 people aboard.
Waterloos said the investigators hoped to travel to the United States to meet with the FBI, which examined the home flight simulator of the aircraft commander Zahari Shah, as well as a meeting with Boeing representatives in an attempt to obtain and re-examine the raw data.
A similar meeting, planned for September 2017, was canceled after US authorities asked for "secret clauses" to protect Boeing's "industry secrets."
third party
Waterloos said the French investigators had identified a "third party" with information or data about the missing plane's path, adding that there was a state of anger over the presence of three parties carrying important information about the mysterious flight.
In addition to verifying data from the FBI and Boeing, the researchers were seeking to establish whether the "third party" had sold a program capable of reprogramming or even breaking through the hard drive, the antenna connected to the Inmarsat satellite from the aircraft.
The identity of the "third party" has yet to be determined, but Waterloos referred to SITA, a company that provides Malaysian Airlines with communications via VHF, INMARSAT satellites and communications and reporting systems.
The company said following the disappearance of the plane that it cooperates with and supports ongoing investigations.
The engineer and flight expert Dr. Victor Anillo, who was a member of the independent group of advisers who help in the search, expressed doubts about the ability of French investigators to obtain evidence concerning the intent to penetrate or scan the data of the trip.
"It is not clear what additional information French investigators expect to receive while in the US Boeing has cooperated with the investigation team in Annex 13 and is unlikely to provide private French investigators with data that has not already been made public. "The FBI is unlikely to issue information about current or past investigations."
No information has been made about the mysterious third party referred to by Waterloos, who may have sold a program capable of maliciously changing satellite data, although there are few companies in the United States and Canada that provide hardware and software to design and test parts of the Inmarsat network.
Anillo said investigators trying to solve the mystery were on the verge of deadlock, but hoped investigators would get new information in the United States.
Despite the consensus that the plane had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, the great efforts of the official and private investigators failed to locate debris on the seabed.
France is the only country that is still investigating the fate of the plane, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
