Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office announced on Tuesday that 80-year-old former head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), August Hanning, had been arrested at his home in Bad Toelz-Wolfratshausen in southern Germany on suspicion of treason and espionage. Simultaneously, in western Germany in Steinfurt, Hanning’s former office manager, Manfred D., was also arrested. The two suspects were then brought to the Federal Supreme Court in Karlsruhe for a court appearance.
The prosecutor’s office stated that Hanning is being accused of serious crimes of high treason, espionage, attempted treason, and espionage, while Manfred D. is charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and high treason espionage.
Hanning led the Federal Intelligence Service from December 1998 to November 2005, and after stepping down, he worked as a private consultant and served as the State Secretary for the Interior Ministry. Manfred D. served as the chief of staff for several BND directors after Hanning’s departure from March 2012 to March 2026, allowing him prolonged access to sensitive information.
Investigations revealed that in the spring of 2010, the two men reached an agreement where Manfred D. would provide internal information to Hanning in exchange for compensation. Over the years, Manfred D. delivered about 2,000 documents, including highly classified briefings strictly for internal BND use and for high-ranking officials in the Prime Minister’s office.
Hanning used this information for his private consulting business and even wrote analysis reports for foreign intelligence officials using the classified information, continuously transmitting political information to their representatives over the years. The identity of the foreign intelligence agency involved has not been disclosed by prosecutors yet, but reports from Süddeutsche Zeitung suggest it is not related to Russia.
Local media reported that suspicions about Hanning holding unauthorized intelligence files stemmed from a dispute involving the custody and kidnapping of Christina Block, the heiress of a German steakhouse, back in 2023. Block was accused of planning the kidnapping of her two young children, and investigators alleged that Hanning was involved in an earlier attempted kidnapping of the same children, which Hanning denies.
During a search operation, police accidentally discovered recent sensitive classified information from the BND stored on electronic devices, leading to the exposure of this high-level espionage case.
Director of the Federal Intelligence Service, Martin Jaeger, stated that the agency had initiated a comprehensive internal investigation upon discovering discrepancies and emphasized that “there can be no compromise on internal security matters.” Hanning did not respond to requests for comments from media outlets like Reuters, while the Prime Minister’s office declined to provide any comment.