May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Deutsche Telekom AG probes of customer phone data to find the source of leaked internal information were ordered by top executives, Handelsblatt reported, citing a former manager and the head of a company that collected the data.

The instructions to study phone records of journalists, company executives and supervisory-board members in 2005 and 2006 was approved by Deutsche Telekom's management board, said Ralph Kuehn, head of network.deutschland GmbH, the Berlin-based company hired to collect records.

Kai-Uwe Ricke, Deutsche Telekom's chief executive officer at the time, and supervisory board head Klaus Zumwinkel were aware of the probe and had told an employee in the corporate security department to keep it a secret, Heinz Klinkhammer, the former head of personnel, told Handelsblatt.

The probe led Deutsche Telekom to suspect Wilhelm Wegner, a supervisory board member and works council head, had provided confidential information to journalists, the German newspaper said. There were no consequences for Wegner, Kuehn told the newspaper.

Handelsblatt couldn't reach Wegner for comment. Ricke denied Klinkhammer's allegations and an unidentified spokesman for Zumwinkel said he hadn't given orders for the probe, the newspaper said. Deutsche Telekom declined to comment, the newspaper said.

Mark Nierwetberg, a spokesman for Deutsche Telekom, declined to comment on the articles as prosecutors are still deciding whether to initiate an investigation. The supervisory board will have an extraordinary meeting today to discuss the situation, Nierwetberg said. Deutsche Telekom declined to provide contact information for Ricke.

``The chairman of the supervisory board can't give orders to the employees of the company,'' Dieter Schweer, a Hamburg-based spokesman for Zumwinkel, said in an e-mailed statement. If the data abuse occurred as alleged, it happened without Zumwinkel's consent, according to the statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Kirchfeld in Frankfurt at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 28, 2008 03:19 EDT