The former head of German intelligence was arrested on suspicion of espionage. What is known

On the morning of Tuesday, October 6, German police arrested the country's former foreign intelligence chief, August Hanning, and his former chief of staff, Manfred D., on suspicion of espionage and attempted treason. According to prosecutors, Manfred D. provided confidential information to Hanning, which he then used in his work as a consultant, including for foreign intelligence officers. It is unclear which countries are being referred to and whether Hanning provided information to Russia.

Hanning, 80, was arrested in North Rhine-Westphalia, and Manfred D., 64, in Bavaria. At the same time, searches were carried out in their homes, as well as in Berlin.

August Hanning headed the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005, and from December 2005 to November 2009 he was one of the state secretaries of the Ministry of the Interior. D. was Hanning's chief of staff all this time. From March 2012 to March 2026, D. was chief of staff to other BND leaders.

According to prosecutors, in the spring of 2010, Hanning asked D. to provide him with intelligence data to which he had access as an employee of the BND. The former intelligence chief intended to use them in his private consulting activities for the sake of enrichment.

Until June 2022, D. handed over about 2 thousand documents to Hanning, many of which were classified and intended exclusively for internal use of the BND. The information that Hanning received was prepared for the BND leadership and used in regular briefings with the country's leadership.

In one case, Hanning used classified information received from Manfred D. to prepare analytical material commissioned by a foreign intelligence officer, prosecutors say. The department does not specify which state we are talking about.

“It has not yet been possible to establish whether this material was transferred to the recipient,” the prosecutor’s office said in a press release.

In addition, Hanning maintained active contacts with an employee of another government intelligence agency, the prosecution believes. For several years, the ex-head of the BND supplied him with political information, partly based on material received from Manfred D.

According to Suddeutsche Zeitung, the documents that Hanning accessed included information about the Iranian nuclear program and the Russian army, among other things.

Hanning came to the attention of the police about a year ago in connection with an entirely unrelated matter.

On September 16, 2025, police raided his home in Nordwald near Münster. System360, Hanning's private security firm, was then suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of the children of Christina Block, the daughter of steakhouse chain owner Eugene Block. Block, investigators believed, had hired System360 to bring, using force if necessary, her two children from Denmark, where they lived with her ex-husband.

Hanning denied involvement in the kidnapping. The police seized boxes of documents from him. Their analysis took several months. At some point, the police inserted an undercover agent into Hanning's company, writes SZ.

It was in the documents seized during that search that secret materials were discovered that Hanning should not have had access to. SZ sources say that this was the most significant espionage discovery in the history of the Hamburg police (it was in this region that the Christina Block case was investigated).

As a result, the Hamburg police shared their findings with the BND, which created a working group to further investigate.

According to SZ, investigators believe that Hanning had no sources in the BND other than Manfred D., although the former head of the department maintained good relations with the foreign intelligence service - and was present at the inauguration of the current head of the BND, Martin Jäger, in September 2025.

Before German reunification, Hanning worked as a diplomat in East Berlin - and, as SZ notes, since then there have been rumors about his close ties with Russia, although there has been no evidence of this.

In 2013, Hanning acted as a witness for Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska in court in London in the Rusal case.

Hanning also worked as a consultant for London-based G3, where he was involved in business related to Russia, writes SZ.

In addition, Hanning was a member of the supervisory board of the Latvian bank PNB. In this role, he acted as a mediator between two co-owners of Russian origin.

At the same time, according to SZ, NDR and WDR, in the case described by the prosecutor’s office with the preparation of materials for a foreign intelligence officer, we are not talking about Russia.

According to The Insider (Russia's registry of "foreign agents"), after leaving the BND, Hanning traveled to Russia at least seven times between 2015 and 2019. Some of the trips lasted less than a day.