process
Revealing data on Bundestag buildings to Russia: verdict
The defendant holds a newspaper in front of his face as he comes to the courtroom in the Berlin Supreme Court to begin the trial. Photo: Jörg Carstensen / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
A CD-ROM with data on the properties of the German Bundestag is to be sent to the Russian military intelligence service. But a letter is intercepted – and an employee of a security company comes to court.
The Berlin Court of Appeal sentenced a 56-year-old to a two-year suspended sentence for working as an agent for the Russian military intelligence service GRU.
Senate Chairman Andreas Müller explained the judgment on Thursday that the man created and passed on a CD-ROM with 385 floor plan files of the properties used by the German Bundestag in the capital. “However, it was not about state secrets,” said the judge. The defendant was also ordered to pay 15,000 euros to the state treasury.
The man from Potsdam was an employee of a company that had been commissioned by the Bundestag to inspect “portable electrical devices”. According to investigations, the company was sent PDF files with the floor plans of the properties to be examined in order to carry out the work relating to the operational safety of printers or desk lamps. The defendant knew that these floor plans were not generally available, according to the court. But these were not classified as secret, it was said.
From the overall view of the evidence and the evaluation of file structures, the court was convinced that the defendant had created the CD-ROM, it said in the judgment of the 1st criminal division responsible for state security matters. Then the 56-year-old put the CD in an envelope in September 2017 and sent it to a former employee of the Russian Embassy in Berlin without specifying a sender. According to the indictment, this man was a disguised employee of the Russian military intelligence service GRU.
According to the court, the letter with the CD-ROM was stopped by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The content was copied and then returned to the post. “However, it is not certain that the shipment has reached the addressee,” said the court. However, this is not decisive for the fulfillment of the facts.
The accused is a former officer in the National People’s Army of the GDR who was also headed by the Ministry for State Security of the GDR. In passing on the Bundestag outline, the court was convinced that he acted “on his own initiative, without commission and without payment”. A motive could not be determined.
The 56-year-old was silent in the almost two-month trial. The public prosecutor had demanded two years and nine months in prison, the defense had pleaded for acquittal. The verdict is not yet legally binding.