Austrian investors have been accused of ingratiating themselves with “Europe's last dictator” for good business since 2007. The 2010 Belarusian presidential election resulted in the 2010 Belarusian protests, which were brutally suppressed, but it later emerged that protesters had been spied on by the authorities using their cell phone data. A1 has always emphasized that it had not actively passed on any customer data: "In contrast to most other countries, any access to personal and call data takes place without a court order and without the involvement of the mobile network operator," it said at the time.