56-Year-Old Man Bags Suspended Sentence For Sending German Data To Russia

The Berlin Supreme Court has given a 56-year-old man a two-year suspended sentence due to secret service activities for the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU.

In 2017, the man had created and passed on a CD with 385-floor plan files of the property used by the Bundestag in Berlin, presiding judge Andreas Mueller said on Thursday, while justifying the sentence.

“However, it was not a matter of state secrets,’’ the judge explained. The defendant was also ordered to pay 15,000 euros (17,440 dollars) to the state treasury.

The man from Potsdam just outside Berlin was an employee of a company that had been commissioned by the Bundestag to inspect “portable electrical equipment’’.

According to the investigations, the company received files with the floor plans to be checked for the execution of the work, which involved the operational safety of printers or desk lamps.

The court said the accused knew that these floor plans were not generally accessible.
However, they were not classified as secret, it said.

The 56-year-old then sent the CD to an employee of the Russian embassy in Berlin in September 2017 without indicating a sender.

According to the charges, this employee was a disguised person of the GRU.

The accused was a former officer in the National People’s Army of former East Germany.

The court was convinced that he had acted “on his initiative, without commission and remuneration’’.

A motive, however, could not be established.