The Deutsche Telekom eavesdropping controversy became public at the end of May 2008 through an article in the German weekly '' Der Spiegel''.Spiegel Online May 29, 2008
The prosecutor in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

has initiated investigations against eight former members of Deutsche Telekom's advisory board,

executive board A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

and former employees. The investigation focuses on alleged

eavesdropping Eavesdropping is the act of secretly or stealthily listening to the private conversation or communications of others without their consent in order to gather information. Etymology The verb ''eavesdrop'' is a back-formation from the noun ''eaves ...

against journalists and members of the supervisory executive boards of Deutsche Telekom, allegedly initiated by then chairman of the supervisory board

Klaus Zumwinkel Klaus-Gerhard Maximilian Zumwinkel (, born December 15, 1943) was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman of Deutsche Post between 1990 and 2008. Being under suspicion of tax fraud, he resigned from office on February 15, 2008. He was convicte ...

and then CEO . The objective of the eavesdropping was to find out who had leaked confidential information about planned lay-offs and acquisitions to the media in 2005 and 2006. According to German law half the members of the advisory board of large publicly listed companies have to be representatives of the employees. These were apparently suspected of having leaked the information.

René Obermann René Obermann (born 5 March 1963) is a German businessman who currently serves as Co-Head of Warburg Pincus International LLC's European operations, and also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Airbus SE since 16 April 2020. He was ...

, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, cooperated with the public prosecutor, handing over relevant information and allowing his offices to be searched. Moreover, Obermann called on the prestigious former federal judge Dr. to assist Deutsche Telekom in handling the scandal. A member of the German

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Common ...

compared the possible impact of the scandal in Germany to the ''Spiegel'' affair of 1962. On 24 October 2008, the

Big Brother Award The Big Brother Awards (BBAs) recognize "the government and private sector organizations ... which have done the most to threaten personal privacy". They are named after the George Orwell character Big Brother from the novel ''Nineteen Ei ...

2008 in the category ''Workplace and Communications'' was awarded to Telekom for the scandal.

References

{{reflist 2008 scandals Surveillance scandals Information privacy Telecommunications in Germany Deutsche Telekom Telephone tapping 2008 in Germany