Juncker must explain his role in illegal wiretapping affair, demands former spy chief
JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER must urgently explain his role in an illegal wiretapping scandal in Luxembourg, a former intelligence officer has told The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Juncker resigned as Luxembourg’s prime minister in 2013 in the wake of the scandal that saw intelli- gence chiefs accused of tapping phones, bugging politicians and keeping 13,000 secret files. The 63-year-old president of the European Commission has denied any wrongdoing but has been dragged back into the affair after fresh evidence emerged.
The new revelations led to the postponement of the trial of three former members of Luxembourg’s SREL intelligence service and showed a telephone transcript had apparently been doctored, allegedly by Mr Juncker’s staff.
A conversation secretly recorded in 2007 between Mr Juncker and Marco Mille, then his intelligence chief, allegedly shows them discussing a telephone tap that Mr Juncker denies ever authorising. Mr Mille and two colleagues, André Kemmer and Frank Schneider, are awaiting trial for violating privacy laws. According to The Times, Mr Juncker told an investigating magistrate under oath in May 2015 that “there was definitely no permission for a full phone-tapping operation”.
He denied the unedited transcript, which appears to show him discussing phone-tapping with Mr Mille, proved this was the case, arguing that the transcript simply created “confusion”.
Mr Schneider, a former SREL operations director, who says he was present when Mr Mille recorded the conversation, said: “We may never get to see Juncker in court.
“But Mr Juncker needs to explain why he told an investigating judge that he did not authorise this wiretap.”