Thomas Maresca

Special to USA TODAY

A senior civil servant who works for the French Senate is under investigation for spying for North Korea, a French judicial official said.

French intelligence agencies arrested Benoit Quennedey, a senior administrator in France’s upper house of parliament, on Sunday on suspicion of collecting and delivering sensitive information to Pyongyang, the unnamed official told news agency AFP on Tuesday.

Quennedey was head of the Franco-Korean Friendship Association and has written books and essays on North Korea and traveled extensively to the isolated nation since 2005, according to the website of his publisher, Delga. His latest book was “North Korea, the Unknown,” published in 2017.

Quennedey, an administrator in the Senate’s Directorate of Architecture, Heritage and Gardens, is reportedly being held at the headquarters of the Directorate General for Internal Security, France’s domestic intelligence agency, outside of Paris.

In a statement, French Senate President Gerard Larcher said he authorized a search of Quennedey’s office and said that that the suspect was suspended from his job while the investigation is ongoing.

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Quennedey is being investigated for the "collection and delivery of information to a foreign power, likely to undermine the fundamental interests of the nation,” according to the judicial official, AFP reported. The offense is punishable by ten years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $170,000 according to local media reports.

It is unclear how what kind of sensitive secrets Quennedey would have been able to gather in his position in the Senate. French newspaper Le Parisien quoted his book publisher as saying that Quennedey “had no access to strategic information.”

Quennedey was arrested at his home after spending a weekend visiting his parents in Dijon, eastern France. His last trip to North Korea was in September with the Franco-Korean Friendship Association (AAFC in French).

The group advocates for closer ties to North Korea and supports reunification of the Korean Peninsula. In a statement on its website, the AAFC denounced the charges against Quennedey.

“These charges are implausible and extravagant in light of the information that Mr. Quennedey could hold given the service in which he works,” the statement said.

France is the only member of the European Union that does not recognize North Korea as a sovereign state and has no diplomatic relations with Pyongyang.

North Korea has spent the last year on a wave of diplomacy to improve its international standing and see crippling sanctions related to its nuclear weapons program lifted.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with President Trump at a historic summit in June in Singapore and both leaders signed an agreement that promised to work toward a “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” but progress has stalled out in recent months.

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