BERLIN (AP) – A German man has been accused of espionage for allegedly transmitting information about the properties used by the German parliament to Russian military intelligence, prosecutors said on Thursday.
The suspect, identified only as Jens F. under German confidentiality rules, worked for a company that had been repeatedly hired to check portable electrical appliances by the Bundestag or lower house of parliament, federal prosecutors said in a statement. .
As a result, he had access to PDF files with floor plans of the properties involved. The Bundestag is housed in the Reichstag building, a landmark in Berlin, but also uses several other sites.
Prosecutors said at one point, before the beginning of September 2017, the suspect “decided on his own initiative” to provide information on the properties of Russian intelligence services. They said he sent the PDF files to an employee of the Russian Embassy in Berlin, who was an officer at the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.
They did not specify how his activities came to light.
The charges against the suspect, who is not in custody, were filed in a court in Berlin on February 12. The court will have to decide whether to continue a trial.
Relations between Germany and Russia have been affected by a growing list of problems in recent years.
In October, the European Union imposed sanctions on two Russian officials and part of the GRU agency for a cyber attack on the German parliament in 2015.
In addition, a Russian man accused of killing a Georgian man in broad daylight in central Berlin on Moscow’s orders in 2019 is on trial in Berlin.
And last year’s poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was transported to Germany for treatment and then arrested immediately after returning to Russia, added another layer of tension.