Germany’s former foreign intelligence chief has been detained on suspicion of passing state secrets to a foreign intelligence service, the country’s federal prosecutor’s office has said.
Prosecutors allege August Hanning, whose tenure at the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) ended in 2005, paid for access to classified documents from a former aide at the BND. It is claimed Hanning used them to prepare an analysis which he intended to sell on to a foreign intelligence service as part of his consulting activities.
He is “strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, spying out state secrets, attempted treason and espionage”, the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Prosecutors did not identify which foreign intelligence service he was allegedly preparing the analysis for, and it was not immediately clear whether it reached its intended recipient.
According to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung the case does not involve Russia.
Hanning, 80, was arrested in Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen in southern Germany on Tuesday. The former aide, identified only as Manfred D, was also arrested on Tuesday in Steinfurt in western Germany.
Manfred D is charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage.
Prosecutors said they are also searching the suspects’ premises in these locations and in Berlin.
From the spring of 2010 until July 2022, Manfred D continuously obtained valuable information for Hanning from the BND in exchange for payment, said the prosecutor’s statement.
He allegedly provided him with nearly 2,000 documents, many of them classified and intended solely for internal use within the BND and senior-level intelligence briefings at the chancellery.
According to the statement, Hanning was in close contact with a member of another state intelligence service, and he supplied this individual with political information over several years, which was partly based on material he had received from Manfred D.
Hanning was president of the BND from December 1998 to November 2005. Manfred D served as his chief of staff at that time, and later served as chief of staff for several subsequent BND presidents from 2012 until 2026.
“In his role, he had access to confidential information,” the prosecutor's office said.
The German newspaper Bild said that the investigation was launched after the discovery of an alleged leak of intelligence reports intended for the chancellery.
The arrests came after a separate investigation into allegations that Hanning abducted Hamburg businesswoman Christina Block’s children from her ex-husband in Denmark in January 2024 in a custody battle that had been going on for several years.
The current investigation stems from evidence found during a search of Hanning’s residence in connection with that case, the federal prosecutor’s office stated.
Both of the accused will be brought before the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice on Tuesday and Wednesday.
German opposition lawmaker Konstantin von Notz voiced his shock about the allegations against Hanning and called for a quick investigation.
“This is a hard-hitting and deeply troubling story,” said von Notz, a member of the Greens party and also the German parliament committee overseeing the intelligence services.
“We expect a swift and thorough investigation into the egregious allegations levelled against former BND chief Hanning,” von Notz told Spiegel Online.