With a series of high-profile arrests of alleged Chinese and Russian spies in recent days, confidence in German counterintelligence agents – once criticized for their lack of courage – has seen a significant revival, according to the FT.
On Tuesday morning, the German police seized Jian Guo, an employee who worked in the European Parliament, accused by prosecutors of espionage in favor of China.
On Monday, three German citizens, including a husband and wife, were picked up in the western German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen on suspicion of trying to sell military technology to Beijing.
Also last Thursday, two men were detained in Bavaria for allegedly plotting to bomb several military and logistics sites in Germany on behalf of the Russians.
In all three cases, the role played by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, was crucial.
“Our security authorities, in particular [BfV]have massively strengthened their counterintelligence efforts lately,” said German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, after Guo’s arrest. “The current successes of the investigations thoroughly demonstrate this.”
Haunted by past scandals, hampered by heavy federalization and limited by strict legal restrictions on intrusive surveillance and intelligence gathering, the BfV has been viewed with suspicion for years by both the country’s authorities and its partner agencies. abroad.
The BfV’s recent results indicate that, since the Cold War until now, hostile states are more willing than ever to aggressively pursue their goals on European soil, German government officials note.
“We are currently looking very closely at new forms of authoritarian states to influence and destabilize our democracy,” Konstantin von Notz, chairman of the German parliament’s powerful intelligence committee, which oversees the BfV, told the Financial Times.
A European security official who works regularly with the BfV said that the sharing of classified information between services on the continent is now “absolutely vital to almost every successful action that has been undertaken [împotriva Rusiei şi Chinei]”, BfV taking an active part in this process carried out at European level.
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