From the intelligence offices to the green rectangle... a former German intelligence official accused of treason

Danksreiter (64 years old) is accused of working alongside August Hanning, the former head of the German Federal Intelligence Service, to leak thousands of secret documents. It is believed that at least some of these files were sold to a foreign power.

The two men were arrested on suspicion of espionage and high treason. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office announced that the investigating judge at the Federal Supreme Court executed two detention warrants against them on October 6 and 7, placing them in pretrial detention.

According to the prosecution's account, the two men agreed in 2010 that Danksreiter would continuously provide Hanning with sensitive information from the agency in exchange for money. Prosecutors said he was suspected of handing over about 2,000 documents over the years, including classified materials intended for internal use and high-level intelligence briefings in the chancellor's office.

Danksreiter served as director of the office of the head of the agency, which allowed him access to confidential information that he allegedly leaked to his former boss after Hanning left the agency. He retired last March, after working as director of the office of a number of agency heads for two decades.

Most notably, he held this position while Hanning (80 years old) was head of the agency for six years, ending in November 2005. The crimes attributed to him were revealed following a months-long investigation that included him and his former boss.

Hanning is accused of illegally collecting secret documents over a period of 16 years through his former office manager, and of selling some secrets to a foreign power. According to the prosecution, Hanning used this information to prepare an analysis for an officer in a foreign intelligence service, and for years he exchanged political information with a representative of that agency.

The authorities have not yet revealed the identity of this country, but Der Spiegel magazine reported that some information was allegedly sold to Azerbaijan. It was not immediately clear whether the analysis had reached the intended destination.

The Telegraph learned that some of the documents may have included secret British intelligence information exchanged by the British Foreign Intelligence Service (MI6). Sources told the newspaper that Martin Yeager, the current head of the German agency, contacted his British counterparts to reassure them that everything that could be done was being done to close this security gap.

Yeager said that the agency launched extensive internal investigations immediately after the suspicions emerged, stressing that “there is no room for any concessions regarding internal security.”

Danksreiter, a father of two children, lives with his family in the Mysore neighborhood of the town of Gertsried in Bavaria, about a 50-minute drive from Munich. He is associated with a football club near his residence, and in 2012 he led the men’s second team, as a coach, to third place in its league.

Danksreiter told his acquaintances at the club, which is about 19 miles from Weilheim, that he worked as an “asset manager.” His teammates described him as a "successful midfielder" in the German provincial leagues.

This case is strikingly similar to the case of another former German spy who allegedly leaked secrets while volunteering as a coach at another club. In 2023, the Telegraph revealed that Carsten Linke was working at the Weilheim Football Club, where he trained a number of junior teams, and he used to tell everyone who asked him that he was a soldier.