A 61-year-old former consular worker at the Dutch foreign affairs ministry faces 15 years in jail for selling state information to Russia since 2008.

The public prosecution department said on Tuesday that Raymond P should be jailed for 15 years for selling political and military secrets relating to the EU and Nato to a couple in Germany, who then passed it on to the Russian secret service.

He is also charged with corruption, money laundering and illegal possession of a firearm, the department said in a statement.

Sleepers

The couple in Germany, known by the names Andreas and Heidrum Anschlag, were actually Russian spies who posed as a normal family, having arrived in the country at the end of the 1980s, pretending to be Austrians of South American origin, according to earlier media reports.

They went on trial in Germany in January charged with giving Russia’s foreign intelligence service information on German, EU and NATO security policies and face 10 years in jail.

The arrest of the couple led investigators to P, who is alleged to have had serious debts and earned an estimated €72,000 from his spying activities. He was arrested at Schiphol airport en route for Bangkok.

Officials found four usb sticks in his luggage containing confidential information, two of which could be traced back to the couple. Hundreds of documents were later found at his home.