Former Deutsche Telekom security manager Klaus Trzeschan was jailed yesterday for his part in a spying scandal that has engulfed the telco.
The ex-staffer was jailed for three and half years, after a German court found him guilty of breaching the country’s Federal Privacy Act and misusing company funds during an investigation into leaks of corporate information at the operator, Bloomberg reported.
Lawyers for the victims expressed disappointment that Trzeschan was the only man convicted, after cases against three other men allegedly involved in the scandal were settled out of court, the news site said.
Trzeschan had previously admitted illegally obtaining the phone records of journalists and Deutsche Telekom board members during the investigation in 2005, but claimed he acted with the blessing of former CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke.
Prosecutors threatened to re-open an investigation into Ricke’s involvement in the affair on the back of Trzeschan’s claims, after dropping the probe due to lack of evidence earlier this year.
Although Ricke denied authorizing the use of illegal methods to discover the source of the leaks, the judge slammed Deutsche Telekom for facilitating the action.
In an ironic twist, the source of the information has never been found, Trading Markets.com notes.