German ex-spy chief arrested for treason: What we know

The office announced on Tuesday that August Hanning, 80, was arrested and faces charges including “treasonous espionage, obtaining state secrets, attempted treason” through contact with foreign intelligence services.

The office has not specified which country or countries Hanning is accused of working for.

Citing unnamed sources, however, German news outlet Der Spiegel reported that Hanning was in contact with an Azerbaijan intelligence agency representative. In 2025, prosecutors also accused Hanning of ties with Israeli spies in a separate case which ultimately led them to the ex-intelligence boss’s alleged espionage for other agencies.

If found guilty, treason carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in Germany.

German news outlet Deutsche Welle described Hanning’s arrest as Germany’s “biggest espionage scandal of the century”.

Born in Nordwalde, Westphalia, western Germany, in 1946, Hanning served as the head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005 and later moved to work in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, before working as a state secretary until 2009.

German media showed pictures of Hanning being taken from his red-brick house in Norwalde, close to Munster, to a bulletproof vehicle by masked officers on Tuesday morning.

They claim Hanning used classified intelligence to “draft an analysis” for a foreign intelligence service and kept “close contact” with another foreign spying service for “several years” while he was working as a private consultant.

They say that in 2010, Hanning came to an agreement to receive confidential information from his former bureau chief – who was in office until March this year and is named only as “Manfred D” – and was preparing to provide an “analysis” of it to a foreign power in exchange for money. It is unclear if the analysis was duly shared.

However, Hanning is also alleged to have passed on potentially sensitive political information, partly based on information provided by Manfred D, to a contact representing a separate foreign intelligence service.

Manfred D was also arrested on Tuesday and charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage.

“Both suspects are believed to have agreed, in the spring of 2010, to have Manfred D continuously transmit valuable intelligence from the Federal Intelligence Service to Hanning in exchange for remuneration,” a statement from the prosecutor’s office said.

Over the years, Manfred D provided Hanning with approximately 2,000 documents, “many of which contained classified information to be used exclusively by the Federal Intelligence Service for internal purposes, particularly for executive intelligence briefings”, it added.

“Hanning was to capitalise on said information in the context of his private consulting services, which he had since been offering,” the prosecutor’s office said.

The alleged espionage by Hanning and Manfred D was uncovered during an investigation into a separate kidnapping case involving German businesswoman and steakhouse chain heiress, Christina Block.

In that case, Hamburg prosecutors accused Block of arranging the kidnapping of her two youngest children in 2023 due to a custody dispute. Prosecutors said Hanning put Block in touch with a private Israeli espionage firm to carry out the abductions. The former spy chief and a police officer were accused of accepting more than 100,000 euros ($112,000) from Block in exchange for returning her children from Denmark, where they were living with her ex-husband. The trial is ongoing.

Little detail is available about the contents of the 2,000 documents, but German news outlet Suddeutsche Zeitung reported that a number of them related to Iran’s nuclear programme and the Russian military.

It added that other materials were highly sensitive and classified as secret by allied intelligence agencies in other countries.

Marc Henrichmann, chairman of the parliament’s intelligence oversight committee, said in a statement to the AFP news agency that Berlin would not “tolerate the betrayal of secrets”.

“Whoever allies themselves with the enemies of our liberal democracy will be found out,” he said, adding that Hanning’s alleged actions would amount to “trampling his official duties underfoot”.

The current head of the BND, Martin Jaeger, told the German Rheinische Post newspaper that the agency had “quickly carried out extensive internal investigations” into the former chief before federal prosecutors took over the case.

“For the BND and for me, there are no compromises when it comes to internal security,” Jaeger said, adding that it had “not called into question any of my aims or any of my priorities”.

In 2023, a high-ranking German intelligence officer, identified as “Carsten L”, was charged with high treason when prosecutors alleged he had obtained classified intelligence on the war in Ukraine and the Wagner mercenary group and shared it with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). His case is ongoing.

In 1974, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt was forced to resign following revelations that an East German spy had worked as his close aide for nearly two years.