British Surveillance Company Denies Planting Bug In Ecuador Embassy

The British company accused by Ecuador of planting a bug in their London embassy is denying the allegations.

On Wednesday, Ecuador’s foreign minister Ricardo Patino made the accusations against the firm Surveillance Group Ltd., adding that his country would seek London’s assistance to get to the bottom of their investigation.

The company in question made a statement denying the allegations and calling them “completely untrue”.

CEO Timothy Young flatly rejected the accusations by the Ecuadorean foreign minister.

“The Surveillance Group do not and have never been engaged in any activities of this nature” Young said.

“We have not been contacted by any member of the Ecuadorean government and our first notification about this incident was via the press this morning,” he added.

Patino described the Surveillance Group as “one of the biggest private investigation and undercover surveillance companies in the United Kingdom”.

Ecuador claims that the device was found on June 16, in the office of the ambassador Ana Alba during a routine security check.

At the time, Patino was scheduled to hold talks in the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is living at the embassy in his quest to seek asylum in Ecuador.

The British government has denied safe passage to Assange, who is avoiding extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault charges.

During his visit to London, Patino held negotiations with his British counterpart, William Hague, to push for the safe-conduct of the WikiLeaks founder.

As to why he waited so long to come public about the allegations Patino explained,

“I did not bring this up before because I didn’t want my visit to London to hold talks on Julian Assange to be confused with accusations over this surveillance device found in the ambassador’s office.”

Assange fears that if he returns to Sweden, the US can then extradite him over the release of confidential documents to Wikileaks.

Do you think that there really was a microphone in Ecuador’s embassy in London?