German spy suspect accused of leaking Bundestag plans to Russians

Berlin (dpa) – A German man has been charged with spying for Russia after he allegedly passed on floor plans for the Berlin parliament to a Russian intelligence agent.

Identified by the attorney general only as Jens F, the man had worked for a company that repeatedly carried out work on behalf of the Bundestag, the seat of German parliament, inspecting electrical devices used in the building.

This gave him access to PDF files of the floor plans, which he sent to an employee of the Russian embassy in Berlin who worked for the GRU military intelligence agency, the attorney general said in a statement.

“In the period of late July 2017 until early September 2017 at the latest, the accused decided on his own initiative to hand over information about the properties of the German Bundestag to Russian intelligence services,” the statement added.

Jens F is to appear before a special court in Berlin for prosecuting crimes against the state on suspicion of intelligence agent activity.

A spokesman for the attorney general in Karlsruhe said the 55-year-old suspect has not been taken into custody and that he was not considered a flight risk.

The case adds to a list of alleged interference that has battered Berlin’s already-strained relations with Moscow.

In 2015, the Bundestag was hacked in a cyberattack which Germany blames on Russian state actors.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose own offices were targeted in the attack, excoriated Russia’s “outrageous” behaviour in a speech to parliament last May, citing “hard evidence” of the country’s involvement and accusing it of “hybrid warfare.”

Months later, the European Union imposed new sanctions on Russia in response to the attack, targeting part of the GRU agency known as “unit 26165” or more commonly “Fancy Bear.”

Fancy Bear has been described as an “advanced threat group” which uses multiple backdoor packages to gain access to targeted systems.

The hacking group “has been active since 2008, targeting mostly military and government entities in NATO countries,” as well as Ukraine, according to Russian computer security firm Kaspersky.

Russia was quick to respond to the latest spying allegations.

“Such reports about captured ‘Russian spies’ only fuel an anti-Russian information campaign to support the myth of Moscow’s aggression,” Leonid Sluzki, head of the Duma parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Interfax agency.

Sluzki also questioned why the case only came to light now and not in 2017. “The paranoia is growing,” he added.