Berlin intelligence HQ floods after bathroom taps stolen

Berlin has its own Watergate scandal after thieves stole bathroom taps and flooded the new headquarters of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency headquarters.

The new base of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) is supposed to be the capital’s most high-security building site, monitored around the clock by guards.

Yet early on Tuesday morning thieves reportedly broke into the complex and removed taps from bathrooms on several floors.

“As the pipes stood under pressure, water found its way in between floors, destroyed doors, electrical and security technics,” said a police spokesman.

The missing taps, and resulting flooding, were not noticed in the largely deserted complex until 3pm. A spokeswoman for the site construction firm said they were still trying to gauge how long precisely water had been flowing.

A spokesman for Berlin's water company told Berlin's BZ tabloid that "with a pressure of three to four bars, around 1,300 litres of water would flow per hour out of an open pipe".

As the stolen taps were worth only about €100 each, police say they cannot ruling out that the theft, and resulting flooding, had a “political motive” – possibly carried out on orders of another intelligence service.

One indication for this, the spokesman said, was that taps were stolen only from the upper floors of the new €790 million BND headquarters to cause maximum damage.

The complex was scheduled to open in 2014 but the blueprints were stolen in 2010, forcing a rapid redesign of the site, at huge cost, during construction. The BND declined to comment on the theft of either the blueprints or the taps.

Last year the opening was put back to 2017 after last-minute problems emerged with motion sensors and ventilation system.

Architects and building contractors are currently inspecting the damage before they announce how long it will take to rectify.

Construction on the complex began in 2006 and is intended to house 4,000 BND employees, currently based outside Munich.

The mystery of the missing taps sparked a fresh wave of Schadenfreude on social media yesterday.

One Twitter user asked if the water had come from a secret source while another expressed concern about the consequences of this BND leak.