An Indian-origin former German lawmaker today admitted to child pornography charges against him and agreed to pay a fine of $5,600 in exchange for a court halting his high-profile trial, a case that triggered a major political scandal leading to resignation of a minister.

45-year-old Sebastian Edathy admitted to downloading child pornography images and video onto his official parliamentary laptop, paving the way for the court proceedings to be stopped. He will have no criminal record.

"I've now realised that I made a mistake, and it took me too long to realise it," Edathy, who was born in Hannover as the son of a migrant from Kerala and a German mother, said in a statement read out by his lawyer.

"The accusations are true," said Edathy, a former candidate for a ministerial post in chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative- social democrat coalition government.