Three German citizens arrested on suspicion of passing military knowhow to Chinese authorities

Three German citizens have been arrested on the suspicion of passing technical military knowhow to Chinese authorities in return for money, with payments in the upper five-figures for relevant information they passed on. All three are thought by prosecutors to have been recruited by the Chinese secret service, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), at some point after 2002 in mainland China and been operational until at least June 2022. According to media reports, the accused were encouraged to start research projects that could be useful for a Chinese contract partner and that would be financed by the Chinese state via its agencies. The president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, stated that the trio were “involved in carrying out fictitious transactions to conceal their activities” and that “goods were either not declared or were exported via third countries”, believing also that this spy ring is just one of many similar ones operating in Germany.