THE phone giant Deutsche Telekom faces new raids and increasing political pressure as a spying scandal at its Bonn HQ threatens to dwarf the corporate dirty tricks that have plagued other German industrial groups.
It has emerged that the company used agents of the former East German secret police, the Stasi – men who learned their trade working for one of the world's most tightly controlled states – to try to track down management moles it believed were leaki
ng damaging stories about the company to journalists.
As prosecutors prepare to search the homes and offices of former Deutsche Telekom bosses, Rene Obermann, the current chief executive, said in an interview published yesterday: "I did not hush up anything."
The finger of blame is being pointed at three men: Ron Sommer, a former chief executive; Klaus Zumwinkel, a former head of the supervisory board whose secret millions stashed away in Liechtenstein were found by the German tax-man earlier this year, and Kai-Uwe Ricke, another former chief executive.
But Mr Obermann's position is precarious: according to weekend media reports, when he took over in 2006, money from a management fund he was supposed to authorise was allegedly used to pay snoops working for the company the sum of 359,000 (£282,000).
Hans-Juergen Knoke, who was responsible for security at Deutsche Telekom between 1998 and 2004, said the company had already been engaged in the spying practice under Mr Sommer, who left the group in 2002.
"The management had expressed its discontent that internal information was being leaked non-stop to the press. There was gossip and still more gossip, something new every day," he said.
It was then decided to monitor who had access to documents and maintained contacts with journalists, Mr Knoke said.
The company outsourced the spying to a Berlin consultancy that used former Stasi agents.
Members of the Stasi, which turned one in three of the 17 million citizens of the former German Democratic Republic into informers, were masters at phone tapping and voice analysis. The agency's name is still feared nearly two decades after the state it served ceased to exist.
Klaus Trzeschan, another former Deutsche Telekom security chief, had alleged he had been ordered to spy by Mr Ricke and Mr Zumwinkel, but said they had not been informed of the details of the operation. However, they and Mr Sommer have all denied knowledge of the practice.
Prosecutors raided the firm's Bonn headquarters on Thursday, searching Mr Obermann's office, among many others. Boxes of files and computer data were taken away.
Because of Germany's past experiences of state spying, the scandal is already deemed to be bigger than the sex-and-drugs parties hosted by Volkswagen in a bid to buy off the unions, or the slush funds operated by Siemens to bribe for business abroad.
The telecoms giant insists the consultancy it used had not listened to journalists' conversations but only logged details on who phoned whom as well as the time and duration of the calls
Hans-Peter Uhl, a conservative MP, is to table a parliamentary motion this week calling for tough new legislation on the abuse of customers' data.
Latest in series of rows shakes faith in country's eliteTHE case is the latest in a series of corporate scandals to have shocked Germany – the world's biggest exporter and Europe's largest economy – whose post-war identity has been founded to a large extent on its economic and corporate prowess.
In recent years, Europe's biggest car-maker Volkswagen and Germany's biggest corporate employer Siemens have been caught up in affairs which have gone to court.
Volkswagen was involved in bribing senior members of its Works Council with prostitutes and luxury trips.
Siemens is currently in court over a 1 billion slush fund used to pay bribes in order to obtain contracts.
In addition, an ongoing tax- avoidance scandal involving bank accounts in Lichtenstein held by senior German industrial figures has made the public question the equality of their society.
But the Deutsche Post scandal is even worse in the eyes of Germans.
Snooping is a particularly sensitive subject in Germany, which is still haunted by memories of Hitler's Gestapo and communist East Germany's Stasi secret police.
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was quoted this weekend as warning the scandal had shaken Germans' faith in senior figures.
"If we do not get to a situation where the elite understands that both trustworthiness and lawful behaviour are expected, then things will be difficult," he said.
