BERLIN (AP) – A German man has been charged with espionage for allegedly passing information on properties used by the German parliament to Russian military intelligence, prosecutors said on Thursday.
The suspect, identified only as Jens F., according to German privacy rules, was working for a company that had been repeatedly hired to review portable electrical appliances by the Bundestag or the lower house of parliament, the federal prosecutors in a statement.
As a result, he had access to PDF files with plans of the properties involved. The Bundestag is housed in the Reichstag building, a landmark in Berlin, but also uses several venues.
Prosecutors said, sometime before early September 2017, that the suspect “decided for himself” to give information about the properties to Russian intelligence. He said he sent the PDF files to an employee of the Russian embassy in Berlin who was an official with Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU.
They did not specify how their activities came to light.
Charges against the suspect, who is not in custody, were filed in a Berlin court on 12 February. The court will have to decide whether to pursue a trial.
Relations between Germany and Russia have been affected by a growing list of issues in recent years.
In October, the European Union imposed sanctions on two Russian officials and part of the GRU agency for a cyberattack on the German parliament in 2015.
In addition, a Russian man accused of killing a Georgian man in broad daylight in central Berlin by order of Moscow in 2019 is being prosecuted in Berlin.
And the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was transferred to Germany to be treated and arrested immediately after returning to Russia, last year added another layer of tension.