German federal prosecutors on Monday said that they had charged an American former Defense Department contractor with trying to sell sensitive U.S. military information to the Chinese government.
The prosecutors said that the man — identified only as Martin D. in keeping with German privacy laws — had worked on an American military base in Germany since around 2020, and had repeatedly contacted Chinese officials last summer in an effort to “provide sensitive U.S. military information for forwarding to a Chinese intelligence service.”
There is nothing in the official news release to suggest that the Chinese took him up on the offer.
The American had worked as a Defense Department contractor from 2017 to spring 2023, the prosecutors said in a statement. He was arrested nine months ago and held in pretrial detention, and was charged on Aug. 13 with willingness to act as a foreign intelligence agent “in a particularly serious case,” the statement added.
The German Press Agency reported that the man was upset with his former employer, a possible motive in the attempt.
The case comes amid several separate investigations into potential Chinese spies in Germany in recent years.
A Chinese man arrested last year was an assistant to a German member of the European Parliament from the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. Besides spying on and possibly influencing Maximilian Krah, the lawmaker, that man was suspected of gathering information on Chinese dissident groups active in Germany, investigators believe.
A Chinese woman was arrested last year because investigators believed that she was feeding the Chinese government sensitive information on logistics from a small freight airport in Eastern Germany, where she worked, from where, among other things, aid was routinely sent to the Polish-Ukrainian border.
In the same year, three German citizens were arrested on charges of transmitting sensitive naval data and for obtaining and passing on a controlled high-powered laser that the Chinese government could not have easily purchased directly.
Jim Tankersley is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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