JAKARTA - Germany's Interior Ministry fired the country's cybersecurity chief on Tuesday and launched an investigation, following media allegations of a possible link with Russia, through a jointly established consultant.
Cybersecurity chief Arne Schoenbohm has been under scrutiny in recent weeks, after a satirical TV show highlighted his relationship with cybersecurity consultants, who were counted as members of a German subsidiary of a Russian company founded by a former KGB employee (Komitite Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, the main intelligence agency of the Soviet Union).
Schoenbohm co-founded Germany's Cybersecurity Council, to advise companies and authorities on cybersecurity issues in 2012, before being appointed head of BSI, the federal information security agency, by then-Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a conservative.
A spokesman for the interior ministry, now run by the Social Democratic Party, said Schonenbohm was fired for the allegations "permanently undermining the necessary public trust in neutrality and impartial behavior in his office as president of Germany's most important cybersecurity authority."
Schoenbohm said he himself on Monday asked the ministry to start an investigation.
"It's not clear to me what the ministry has examined and what concrete accusations against me are," he said.
He told Reuters he was no longer active on the board and only delivered a keynote address on his 10th birthday in September, as an exception after receiving the green light from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Meanwhile, Green Party lawmaker Konstantin von Notz, who heads the parliamentary committee overseeing Germany's intelligence agency, asked the ministry to explicitly state allegations against Schoenbohm, as well as answer other open questions, such as who would be nominated to replace him.
"We need clarity on complicated questions whether there are Russian spying activities around BSI or not," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper.
"We cannot allow the integrity of this body to be further damaged," he stressed.
Earlier, comedian Jan Boehmermann reported on his late-night TV program ten days ago, the board has since 2020 calculated among its Berlin-based member of the Protelon GmbH, formerly known as Infotecs, a subsidiary of a Russian company founded by a former KGB employee.
The consultant last week protested that they were unaware of the alleged relationship with the Russian services of the GmbH Protelion, which was issued after the TV program aired.
"We support the efforts of government agencies to clarify the role of the GmbH Protelion in order to assess the extent to which there is actually an attempt to exert influence," said its chairman Hans-Wilhelm Duen, dismissed allegations influenced by Russian agents as "absurd".
The consultant said the Interior Ministry had known the allegations since at least spring, but "no information was provided to the association or potential customers by the official agency".
Meanwhile, the GmbH Head of Protelion could not immediately be asked for comment.
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