Information about the Bundeswehr
German officer arrested for alleged spying for Russia
08/09/2023, 05:38 p.m
In May, a German official is said to have offered himself as an agent to Russia. He works in the procurement office for the Bundeswehr. The federal prosecutor is now arresting the man.
The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office in Koblenz arrested a German official on suspicion of being a secret service agent for Russia. As the authority in Karlsruhe announced, the employee at the Federal Office for Equipment, Information Technology and Use of the Bundeswehr was arrested by BKA officials. His home and workplace were also searched. The accused Thomas H. is strongly suspected of having worked for a foreign secret service. Loud Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann the arrested man is an officer.
From May of this year, the man is said to have contacted the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian Embassy in Berlin several times “of his own accord” and offered to work together. In doing so, he had transmitted information from his professional activity – “for the purpose of forwarding it to a Russian intelligence service”. The Federal Office is responsible, among other things, for equipping the Bundeswehr.
The investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice issued an arrest warrant against the accused Thomas H. The investigations were conducted in close cooperation with the Federal Office for the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Authorities step up surveillance
In December last year, a suspected case of espionage in the Federal Intelligence Service caused an international stir. An employee had been arrested on suspicion of treason. He was accused of having passed secret information to a Russian intelligence service. The federal prosecutor announced at the time that the content was a state secret within the meaning of the Criminal Code. According to the Criminal Code, treason can be punished with a prison sentence of at least five years or even life imprisonment in particularly serious cases like this one.
The German security authorities have recently intensified their efforts against espionage by Russian services. In response to the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, European states had also expelled Russian agents. The federal government declared 40 members of the Russian embassy in Berlin to be undesirable.
In November last year, a former reserve officer in the Bundeswehr was found guilty of being a spy in the service of Russia. The Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court sentenced him to one year and nine months on probation for being an agent in the secret service. The man provided the Russian military intelligence service GRU with information for years – including about the Bundeswehr’s reservist system and the effects of EU sanctions against Russia after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the court explained. He was driven by an “extremely pro-Russian attitude and the urge to make himself popular and important to Russian military personnel.”