The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), in charge of counterintelligence, opened an investigation after members of the Ministry of Economy expressed their suspicions about the two senior officials, reports Die Zeit.
Asked by AFP, the Ministry of Economy and Climate did not want to comment.
The two officials are said to have drawn the attention of their colleagues by defending pro-Russian positions and criticizing the decisions of the government of Olaf Scholz on energy matters, in particular the suspension in February of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia with Germany.
Study stay in Russia
The detailed study of his course by the services showed that one of the two suspects had made a study stay in Russia. The two officials would also maintain an “emotional closeness” with Russia, according to the weekly, noting however that the services had no tangible evidence.
Germany has been shaken in recent years by several espionage cases attributed to Russia. The dependence of Europe’s largest economy on Russian gas supplies has proven to be a weak point in the country since the invasion of Ukraine.
Recently, the German services pointed to probable Russian espionage operations aimed at training Ukrainian soldiers in Germany.
degraded diplomatic relations
At the end of October, the German justice sentenced a former employee of a computer security company to two years in prison for having transmitted data from the German Chamber of Deputies to Russia.
In April, he also handed a suspended one-year prison sentence to a Russian scientist for spying on Europe’s Ariane space program on behalf of Moscow.
Accusations of cyberespionage against Moscow have also soured Russian-German relations, even before the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
Source: BFM TV
