https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/s...utin-867bpgcrx
Senior German energy officials suspected of spying for Putin
Two senior officials working on Germany’s energy security are under investigation as suspected Russian spies, according to a report.
The pair, who have not been publicly identified, are said to hold key posts in the economy ministry, which is managing the complex and painful shift away from Russian gas and oil.….
Die Zeit reported that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) — Germany’s domestic intelligence service — had been
called in to investigate after civil servants in the department became suspicious.
The alarm is said to have been raised after “anomalies” were spotted in internal reports on sensitive subjects such as gas storage, energy security and the
Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was mothballed shortly before the Russian invasion of
Ukraine in February.
The two officials apparently raised eyebrows by “deviating wildly from the minister’s official line” in discussions about Nord Stream 2, the de facto nationalisation of Gazprom’s German arm and plans to rescue Uniper, one of Germany’s biggest energy companies.
Habeck’s team alerted the BfV, whose officers supposedly detected an “emotional closeness to Russia” in the pair and identified biographical details that “stood out” in their CVs, such as a period of study in Moscow.
In the absence of hard evidence that the officials were in the Kremlin’s pay, it remains possible that they simply adopted Russia-friendly positions of their own accord….
Germany’s leaders had cultivated a relationship with
Russia for much of the past two and a half decades before the outbreak of war, including intensive exchange and dialogue programmes. As a result strong sympathy for the Kremlin’s positions was not uncommon in the higher reaches of politics and officialdom, and in some cases it has persisted to this day.
As a rule the BfV does not comment on its operations. The economy ministry has declined to disclose any further information about the case but said it was in close contact with the agency because its strategically important brief put it in “particular focus” for the intelligence services.