Colombia’s chief prosecutor ordered a team of prosecutors to investigate if Constitutional Court magistrates are being wiretapped.
The Prosecutor General’s Office made this announcement after an emergency meeting between chief prosecutor Luz Adriana Camargo and the high court in Bogota.
The meeting was called after media reported that an unidentified magistrate sent a message to his contacts, claiming that “this phone and this chat have been illegally intercepted by State intelligence organs,” according to Caracol Radio.
In a press release, the prosecution said on Saturday that Camargo “ordered to immediately start a corresponding investigation.”
A team of prosecutors will “move forward with speed and rigor” in order to “establish the scope and the impact” of the alleged wiretap.
The director of the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI), Carlos Ramon Gonzalez, told Congress earlier in the week that his agency had not given any order to wiretap magistrates.
The DNI is one of multiple State agencies with the capacity to conduct wiretaps if warranted.
The scandal caused by the magistrate’s wiretapping accusations is the latest of many.
The DNI’s predecessor, intelligence agency DAS, was dismantled in 2011 after it had been caught spying on the Supreme Court, members of Congress and people considered politically inconvenient for former President Alvaro Uribe.
The prosecution was embarrassed in 2018 after evidence emerged that its wiretap capabilities were being used for corporate spying.
Local media reported in 2020 that the former army chief had lost his job because he allegedly ordered his intelligence officers to illegally wiretap journalists, Supreme Court magistrates and politicians.