BERLIN, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- The Public Prosecutor General of the Federal Court of Justice has pressed charges against a suspected Swiss agent on suspicion of passing on sensitive information on German tax investigators to Swiss authorities.
The federal prosecutor accuses the 54-year-old of espionage, the Karlsruhe-based authority announced Wednesday.
Daniel M. allegedly spied on the financial administration of North Rhine-Westphalia between July 2011 and February 2015 on behalf of a Swiss intelligence service.
According to the prosecutor's office, M. was tasked with completing personal data of German tax investigators, such as home addresses and telephone numbers and gathering information about the inner workings of German tax authorities regarding the purchase of tax CDs. The prosecutor's office stated that this had enabled Swiss authorities to prosecute German tax investigators involved in the purchase of bank data.
Daniel M. is also said to have placed an informer, whose identity is still unclear, within the financial administration. Daniel M. has been detained in investigative custody since his arrest on April 28.
According to a report by German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, NDR and WDR, the Federal Prosecutor's Office investigates three other employees of the Swiss secret service NDB in the context of the espionage affair.
In the past, North Rhine-Westphalia in particular has repeatedly bought data of possible tax defrauder which resulted in additional tax payments and fines totaling over 1.8 billion euros (2.11 billion U.S. dollars) by mid-2015, according to the NRW Ministry of Finance.
