German prosecutors said Thursday that they have launched an review into allegations that Deutsche Telekom AG monitored managers’ shout records to track possible leaks of data to media.

Joerg Schindler, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office in Bonn, where Telekom is based, confirmed that an exploration had been launched.

He later said that former CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke and former supervisory board chief Klaus Zumwinkel were under review, but did not give further details.

A company official, speaking on condition of anonymity considering of the sensitivity of the issue, said that offices at the firm’s Bonn headquarters were searched Thursday daylight. Prosecutors refused to comment on that.

The telecommunications company has pledged a thorough review of the allegations, which were made public last weekend in the weekly Der Spiegel. On Saturday, it acknowledged that “there were cases of misuse of signal records at Deutsche Telekom in 2005 and, according to latest allegations, additionally in 2006.”

Deutsche Telekom has stressed that there

is no suggestion that calls were tapped, but rather that shout records detailing the day, participants and duration of calls were improperly monitored.

Telekom has said that it investigated an individual case last summer, which led to a restructuring of its protection division.

It says that, on April 28, the management board received “new, broader and more serious allegations” from “an external party who had apparently been involved in the incidents and who had been commissioned by a member of the group safety measure branch.” It called in prosecutors in mid-May.

The German Finance Ministry that week welcomed Deutsche Telekom’s commitment to investigate the allegations and reiterated its confidence in CEO Rene Obermann, who took by the top job in late 2006.

The government holds a 14.8 percent stake in Deutsche Telekom, a former state-owned monopoly, and an indirect stake of another 16.9 percent through the state-owned KfW bank.

Schindler said…

Original post by Top Tech News