A former head of Germany ’s foreign intelligence service who is charged with passing state secrets to a foreign intelligence service was ordered held in pretrial detention after a judge issued an arrest warrant Wednesday. August Hanning, 80, who is “strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, spying out state secrets, attempted treason, and espionage,” led the Federal Intelligence Service, known by its German acronym BND, from 1998 to 2005. A former aide of Hanning, identified only as Manfred D. in line with German privacy rules, was also arrested Tuesday and is already in pretrial detention.
He is accused of aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage. Read moreGermany's former spy chief detained on suspicion of trading state secrets The two men allegedly agreed in 2010 that Manfred D. would continuously provide Hanning – who had left office five years earlier – with valuable foreign intelligence information in exchange for payment. Manfred D. served as chief of staff for several subsequent BND presidents from 2012 until 2026.
The federal prosecutor's office says Hanning allegedly used this information to his financial advantage in his private consulting work. To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading.
To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Based on the current status of the investigation, Manfred D. is said to have provided his former boss with approximately 2,000 documents over a 12-year-period through June 2022. In one instance, Hanning is alleged to have used classified information to prepare an analysis for an employee of a foreign intelligence service.
However, “it has not yet been possible to determine whether the report reached its intended recipient,” the federal prosecutor’s office stated. According to prosecutors, Hanning may have had access to information intended exclusively for use within the BND. Many of the documents contained classified information for executive intelligence briefings.
Beyond that, prosecutors have not given any further details about the mostly classified material and are not expected to do so in the near future. Read more‘Russian sleeper cell’: Can Germany’s far-right AfD be barred from sensitive intel? The prosecutor's office did not reveal who exactly the two men were suspected of spying for or which foreign intelligence services they provided with classified information.
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