The US National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapped the communications of two French economy ministers and spied on the country’s largest companies, according to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, just one week after it emerged the US had spied on the last three presidents of France.
Pierre Moscovici, the former minister of the economy under French President Francois Hollande and Francois Baroin, the former economy minister under ex-president Nicholas Sarkozy and now the minister for budget, were both targeted by the NSA, French media reported on Monday, citing WikiLeaks documents.
The NSA had also spied on about 100 French companies, “including almost all of the CAC 40” index of the country’s largest listed firms, according to the French newspaper Liberation and online news portal Mediapart.
“Never has evidence of such huge economic espionage in France, orchestrated at the highest ranks of the American government, been established so clearly,” said Liberation.
WikiLeaks said in one document, the NSA had asked intelligence services from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to collect information on proposed French export contracts worth more than $200 million in sectors including telecommunications, electricity, gas, oil, nuclear and renewable energy, and health projects.