Egyptian authorities say they have arrested an engineer from the country's nuclear energy agency on charges of spying for Israel.

The Egyptian government Tuesday announced that the engineer was arrested on February 18 for taking important documents from the Atomic Energy Agency. Authorities accuse the Egyptian worker of selling the documents to Israeli intelligence contacts for thousands of dollars.

Egypt says an Irish man and a Japanese man are also wanted in connection with the case. Security officials say the Egyptian engineer and the foreign men had several meetings in Hong Kong.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev was skeptical about the charges. He said similar stories often circulate in Cairo and always prove to be, in his words, "totally baseless."

In a separate case, Egypt detained in January an Egyptian man with Canadian citizenship on charges of spying for Israel.

Last year, Egypt announced plans to develop a nuclear energy program more than 20 years after abandoning previous plans.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.