Germany charges 3 with spying on naval tech for China
They allegedly gathered information on boat engines, sonar, drones and other technologies and illegally exported specialised lasers to China
German prosecutors said on Thursday they had charged three people suspected of supplying Chinese intelligence with information on maritime technology with potential military uses.
The three German nationals, named only as Herwig F., Ina F. and Thomas R., were accused of “having worked for a Chinese intelligence service”, the federal prosecutor’s office said.
From 2017, Thomas R. had “acted as an agent for an employee of the Chinese intelligence service MSS based in China”, prosecutors said in a statement.
The suspect is said to have made contact with married couple Herwig F. and Ina F., who ran a company in the western city of Düsseldorf.
Together they are accused of obtaining “information on innovative technologies that could be used for military purposes”.
To this end, the couple used their company to make contact with other businesses and scientific institutions, prosecutors said. Between February 2017 and April 2024, “they repeatedly collected information that could in particular be useful for expanding China’s naval combat power”.
