The Spiegel edition reports on a high-profile spy scandal in Germany. An employee of the country's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) secretly worked for Russia. Officer Karsten L. was arrested and his apartment and BND offices were searched. According to the publication, the Federal Criminal Police Office arrested Carsten on December 21 on suspicion of treason.
According to reports, he passed classified information to Russian intelligence. Other details of this investigation have not yet been disclosed. According to Spiegel, Chancellor Olaf Scholz was informed of what was happening a few weeks ago.
Spies from Russia have been repeatedly exposed in Germany in recent years. In November, a court in Düsseldorf sentenced the reserve lieutenant colonel to one year and nine months probation. He contacted the GRU officers and passed them information about the reservists in Germany.
In the spring, a Munich court sentenced a scientist from the University of Augsburg to one year of probation. He gave the Russian Federation information about the European missile system.
Within the BND itself, the latest high-profile espionage scandal occurred in 2014, when an intelligence officer in charge of mail and the registration of classified information in the foreign relations department was arrested. It was reported that he had been a CIA spy since 2008 and had given the Americans almost 220 folders of BND documents, including 3,500 real names of German agents. He later, according to Spiegel, offered himself to the Russians as a spy and sent three documents from the BND to the Russian consulate general in Munich. A Munich court sentenced him to eight years in prison for high treason.