Germany’s authorities say they have arrested a Russian citizen accused of passing sensitive information from a German university to Moscow in return for cash.
The suspect, identified only as Ilnur N., was suspected of "working for a Russian secret service since early October 2020 at the latest," the Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor said in a statement on June 21.
The office said the man was taken into custody on June 18.
The suspect worked as a research assistant for a scientific and technical professorship at a German university, whose name was not provided, it said.
He met a member of a Russian foreign secret service at least three times between October 2020 and June 2021 and passed on information during at least two of these meetings in return for an unspecified amount of cash, the prosecutors added.
An investigative judge at the Federal Court of Justice has ordered the suspect kept in pretrial custody pending a possible indictment.
Maria Butina, a member of Russia's Public Chamber, identified the detained man as Ilnur Nagayev, who worked at a machine-building department at a university in Germany's southern city of Augsburg.