Betrayal of state secrets?

The president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, has brought charges in three cases where confidential information has been leaked to the media, Deutschlandfunk reported on Saturday.

The security agency declined to comment on the report when asked by DPA news agency, but a spokesman, Markus Beyer-Pollok, admitted that staff were angry about "malfeasance and breaches of secrecy."

Deutschlandfunk said that two cases had to do with the publication of excerpts from the 2013 and 2015 financial plans for the agency, of which considerable parts are kept confidential as they contain details on intelligence operations. The excerpts were published in February and April respectively by an Internet service.

'Tarnished image'

The Deutschlandfunk report said the third case concerned a confidential report to the German parliament about a paid informant, nicknamed "Corelli," whom the agency used to glean information on the neo-Nazi scene. The parliament had detailed a special investigator to look into the man's sudden death in April and the information he had provided has been used to prosecute the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Underground.

The German daily "Süddeutsche Zeitung" published information on its website regarding the investigator's report in May.

Deutschlandfunk said the charges were aimed at those who had passed on the information to the media, and not the media that had published it.

Leaks of confidential information had tarnished the image of Germany's intelligence services as reliable partners for those in other countries, according to the broadcaster.