German prosecutors said Thursday that they had opened an investigation into the monitoring of telephone records at Deutsche Telekom related to the company's attempts to trace media leaks.
Reinhard Kowalewsky, a journalist who covers Deutsche Telekom for Capital magazine, filed a complaint with prosecutors to uncover how much personal information Deutsche Telekom obtained about him. The complaint was filed Wednesday in Bonn, said Winfried Seibert, a lawyer for Kowalewsky. Deutsche Telekom may have violated telecommunications privacy laws, Seibert said.
Jörg Schindler, a spokesman for the prosecutors' office in Bonn, confirmed that the investigation had begun, just days after Deutsche Telekom, the largest telecommunications company in Europe, announced an internal investigation.
Schindler said the former company chief executive, Kai-Uwe Ricke, and its former supervisory board chief, Klaus Zumwinkel, were under investigation.
Monika Nostadt-Ziegenberg, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor, said that about 80 people searched offices of Deutsche Telekom, its T-Mobile unit and an unidentified Berlin-based company Thursday.
Deutsche Telekom acknowledged Saturday that "there were cases of misuse of call records at Deutsche Telekom in 2005 and, according to latest allegations, also in 2006." The company has emphasized that there is no suggestion that calls were tapped, but rather that call records detailing the time, participants and duration of calls were improperly monitored.
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