German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that allegations of a German BND intelligence service employee being a double agent were serious.
"If the allegations are true, it would be for me a clear contradiction as to what I consider to be trusting cooperation between agencies and partners," she said at a news conference in Beijing, reports The Guardian.
Officials arrested a 31-year-old BND employee last week, who confessed to acting as a double agent and passing on more than 200 documents to the U.S. intelligence agencies for 25,000 euros ($34,000) over a period of two years.
According to BND, the information that was leaked had no sensitive data.
The incident further spoils relationship with the U.S. after the last year's revelations of large-scale spying of Germany by the U.S. National Security Agency The White House and State Department have not yet commented on the arrest of the double spy. "We continue to decline comment," Caitlin Hayden, spokesman for the US National Security Council, said on Sunday.
On the other hand, German Foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is on a trip to Mongolia, said no further actions would be taken until the investigation reached a conclusion. Opposition in Berlin has been demanding the sacking of the the U.S. ambassador to Germany.
"We haven't finished clearing this up yet. But if suspicions are confirmed that American secret services were involved, it will become a political issue and we can't just get back to business as usual," he told reporters in Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia, reports Reuters.
German President Joachim Gauck, whose role is mostly ceremonial, commented on the issue, Sunday. "If it really is the case that a service has been using an employee from our service in this way, we have to say: 'That is enough'," he said, according to Deutsche Welle.
