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A 55-year-old German is said to have disclosed sensitive information about the Bundestag building to the Russian secret service.
The Federal Prosecutor's office brought charges against Jens F. on suspicion of being a secret service agent.
The man from the Berlin area acted "on his own initiative" and was not recruited by the Russian secret service, said a spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor's Office.
The 55-year-old's company had repeatedly been commissioned to check the safety of electrical devices such as printers or lamps, the prosecution announced in Karlsruhe on Thursday.
The man had access to files with the floor plans of the properties of the Bundestag.
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Between the end of July and the beginning of September 2017 at the latest, he decided to pass the data on to the Russian military intelligence service GRU.
Accordingly, he sent a CD-ROM that he burned himself to an employee in the Russian embassy in Berlin, who works full-time for military intelligence.
The 55-year-old was not in custody because there was no urgent suspicion and there was no risk of escape, said the spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office.
Now the State Security Senate of the Berlin Superior Court must decide on the basis of the evidence presented whether to allow the indictment.
The man's motive is still unclear, at least he had no previous contacts with Russia.
The spokesman did not want to say what the alleged spy was exposed to.
The Bundestag administration did not want to comment on the ongoing investigation.
The FDP was outraged: «Should the suspicion prove to be true, it would be an outrageous process.
After the cyber attack in 2015, the Russian secret service would be involved again in a security incident, ”said the First Parliamentary Secretary, Marco Buschmann.
The incident must be "completely cleared up and have consequences for securing the German Bundestag".
"There is a threat of further strain on the German-Russian relationship, which would be very regrettable," said the FDP politician.
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The reaction from Russia came promptly.
"Such reports of caught" Russian spies "only fuel an anti-Russian information campaign to support the myth of Moscow aggression," said the chairman of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, Leonid Slutsky, of the Interfax agency.
He also asked himself why the case was only now known and not as early as 2017. "The paranoia is increasing."
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210225-99-589216 / 3