The US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the telephone numbers of top Brazilian officials, WikiLeaks said, less than a week after Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff visited the US to mend relations derailed by earlier spying accusations.
The 29 numbers selected for “intensive interception” included those of Rousseff aides, members of the Brazilian Ministry of Finance, diplomats and even the satellite phone on Rousseff’s private jet, WikiLeaks said in a report titled Bugging Brazil posted on Saturday.
WikiLeaks did not say when the phones were monitored, and the officials’ listed positions correspond to posts held during Rousseff’s first term, which ended last year.
Saturday’s report is a fresh reminder of why Rousseff canceled her state visit to the US in 2013 after the NSA’s monitoring of her communications came to light.
It also follows just weeks after revelations of US spying in France.
Rousseff’s trip to the US last month came as her government seeks investors for infrastructure projects worth tens of billions of dollars to help recharge growth of Latin America’s largest economy.
Rousseff considers the spying episode to have been “overcome,” and she trusts in US President Barack Obama and the commitment he has made on that topic, according to a statement published on the Web site of the presidential office on Saturday.
The US and Brazil will make their strategic partnership ever stronger, the statement added.
Brazil’s central bank and the Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management declined to comment on the WikiLeaks report.
The NSA deferred a request for comment to the US National Security Council, which declined to comment, referring to previous general statements on Brazil spying.
Among the Brazilian officials listed by WikiLeaks as having been targeted for monitoring were Luiz Awazu Pereira, a former director of international affairs at Brazil’s central bank and now director of economic policy; members of the Ministry of Finance, including then-executive secretary Nelson Barbosa, who is now planning minister; and Rousseff’s former chief of staff, Antonio Palocci.
“The US targeted not only those closest to the president, but waged an economic espionage campaign against Brazil, spying on those responsible for managing Brazil’s economy,” WikiLeaks said.
WikiLeaks did not say when or if the NSA intercepted calls on the targeted phone numbers.
Other numbers included that of Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, formerly Brazil’s ambassador to the UN who was then minister of foreign affairs and is currently ambassador to the US, as well as former Brazilian ambassadors to Germany and France and other members of foreign affairs ministry.
“US President Obama and the US government have declared, on several occasions, that they would no longer have acts of intrusion upon friendly countries,” Rousseff said in Washington on Tuesday last week, according to a transcript. “I believe President Obama and, what is more, he told me that when he wants — should he ever need non-public information about Brazil, he would call me.”
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