Indictment Filed on Counts of Suspected Treason

Year of issue 2023
Date 08.09.2023

On 24 August 2023, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office filed charges against the German nationals

Carsten L.
and
Arthur E.

before the State Security Chamber of the Berlin Court of Appeals.

There are sufficient reasons to suspect the accused of two counts of joint perpetration of especially serious treason (section 94 para. 1 no. 1, para. 2 sentence 2 nos. 1 and 2, section 25 para. 2 of the German Criminal Code [StGB]).

In essence, the indictment sets out the following facts:

Carsten L. is an officer of the German Federal Intelligence Service BND with security clearance and a particular obligation to confidentiality. He has been acquainted with the self-employed businessman Arthur E. since May 2021. The latter has, in turn, been in contact with a Russia-based, separately investigated entrepreneur with ties to the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB. The three aforementioned individuals met in September 2022 and conspired to procure sensitive BND inventory data for the FSB.
In execution of said conspiracy, Carsten L. provided a total of nine documents from the BND’s internal data processing systems regarding a project aimed at technical intelligence gathering. On two separate occasions between mid-September and early October 2022, he printed out said documents on his office computers in Pullach and Berlin or took photographs of them on the screen. Carsten L. then passed on the information to Arthur E. who photographed the physical print-outs, took the digitised data to Moscow, printed it out on site and handed it over to the FSB. To this end, Arthur E. repeatedly met with FSB officers in Moscow in September and October 2022. The separately prosecuted Russian businessman had arranged those meetings. The latter booked and paid for Arthur E.’s flights to the Russian capital and back to Germany.

During a meeting in Moscow in September 2022, an FSB officer gave Arthur E. a list of questions of particular interest for the intelligence service. Again, Carsten L. sourced BND inventory data to answer them. In the context of a meeting in October 2022, Arthur E. shared the answers with the FSB.

The information from the BND that was revealed to the FSB was classified and constituted state secrets pursuant to section 93 of the German Criminal Code. In both cases, the disclosure of information created the risk of especially serious detriment to the external security of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In exchange for their services, the FSB remunerated the accused to the amount of at least € 450,000 (Carsten L.) and at least € 400,000 (Arthur E.). Arthur E. picked up the amounts in cash in Moscow in November 2022. It was particularly in this instance that Carsten L. ensured that Arthur E., upon his re-entry into Germany, was ‘smuggled’ through the customs control at the airport on alleged professional grounds.

Following arrest warrants issued by the Investigating Judge at the Federal Court of Justice against Carsten L. and Arthur E., the former was arrested on 21 December 2022 and the latter on 22 January 2023 (see Press Release No. 71 of 22 December 2022 and Press Release No. 6 of 26 January 2023).

Both individuals have since been held in pre-trial detention.