WikiLeaks says US spied on French ministers
The transparency website said the ministers targeted were Francois Baroin and Pierre Moscovici, who between them headed the finance ministry from 2011 to 2014.
The allegations, published jointly with newspaper Libération and online outlet Mediapart, came a week after WikiLeaks reported that the NSA spied on three French presidents from at least 2006 to May 2012, prompting the government to protest to Washington that such behaviour between allies was unacceptable.
WikiLeaks said that, in one document dating from 2002 and renewed in 2012, the NSA asked intelligence services from Australia, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand to collect information on proposed French export contracts worth more than $200m.
No specific French companies were named in the WikiLeaks documents.
Another leaked document showed a summary of a phone call between Moscovici, who now serves as Economics Commissioner for the European Union, and a Socialist senator, in which they discussed the poor state of the French economy and ongoing budget negotiations.
In a tweet on June 24 when the alleged NSA spying on French presidents was revealed, Moscovici said he would be shocked if he had been subject to such surveillance. “Unacceptable between allies and friends,” he tweeted. A spokesman for France’s foreign ministry declined to comment.
In Washington, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would not comment on the specifics of the latest WikiLeaks documents.
US intelligence officials have repeatedly asserted that the country does not carry out electronic surveillance for commercial gain.
Some US and European security sources have expressed concern that the latest sensitive documents may have been supplied to WikiLeaks by a previously unknown source, and not by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Snowden took refuge in Russia after releasing tens of thousands of classified US intelligence documents in 2013.
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