German telecom spy scandal widens
The newspaper alleged in a front-page report that Deutsche Telekom, Europe’s biggest phone company, had hired private detectives eight years ago to spy on its news room.
"Their main target was the FTD’s chief reporter at the time, Tasso Enzweiler, who often broke stories about the telecommunication sector," it said.
"The private detectives even used a hidden camera to try and get information about Enzweiler’s source from the news room in Cologne."
Deutsche Telekom acknowledged on Saturday it had hired an outside firm to track hundreds of thousands of phone calls by senior executives and journalists to identify the sources of press leaks.
But it said the "ill-advised use of communications data" happened in 2005 and probably 2006 and has only conceded to spying on the magazine Capital.
Like the Financial Times Deutschland, Capital belongs of the publishing house Gruner und Jahr, which is turn is owned by German media giant Bertelsmann.
Deutsche Telekom has denied that the Berlin consultancy firm it hired had listened to journalists’ the conversations, saying it had merely logged details on who phoned whom as well as the time and duration of the calls.
Chief executive Rene Obermann, who was not in charge at the time of the spying, has announced that state prosecutors and a law firm in western Cologne were investigating the affair.
It is the latest in a string of damaging privacy invasion scandals to a hit a major German company.
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