A total of 5,817 telephone numbers were illegally tapped by the Administration of Security and Counterintelligence through its monitoring systems of communication from the period of 2008 to 2015, revealed the Special Prosecutor’s Office in their new case “Target”, which they presented today.
About ten former and current employees of UBK, which were in managerial positions or were part of the lower echelons, and there is the basic suspicion that they exploited their official position and were involved in the illegal wiretapping.
“Employees of UBK monitored communications through three different systems. During 2008, three of the suspected managers, against the the law, entered telephone numbers into the system, and accessed the intercepted recordings without court orders. There is a reasonable doubt that the first suspect, who had a managerial position at UBK, although he had no legal right, listened in on telephone conversations of people with whom he had a personal relationship, politicians, businessmen and journalists”, said public prosecutor Fatime Fetai.
As stated by Katica Janeva, by wiretapping telephone conversations, fundamental constitutional values were destroyed.
Here are several major points from the press conference:
- 5817 people had their phones tapped and all people who interacted with these people – which is a total of 20,017 individuals;
- There were three systems for the interception of communications;
- During 2008, three people gave orders for the wiretapping of telephone numbers without court orders;
- Through the first system in 2008, 229 numbers were tapped;
- Through the second system, from 2008 to 2015, at least 3.646 telephone numbers were tapped;
- Through the third system, 401 telephone numbers were monitored and 252 of those numbers without of a court order;
- Illegal wiretapping continued even after the affair was uncovered in 2016;
- The destruction of the first two systems significantly prolonged the duration of collecting evidence.
