Berlin. The Bundestag's intelligence control committee has ordered a special audit due to espionage allegations against the former president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), August Hanning, and his former office manager Manfred D.. This emerges from a statement from the MPs, which is available to the Handelsblatt. The committee therefore notes the “serious” allegations “with the greatest concern”.
The two accused are in custody. The Federal Prosecutor's Office accuses the 80-year-old Hanning of being a secret service agent, treasonous spying, spying on state secrets and attempted treason. She is investigating Manfred D. on suspicion of aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous spying. The presumption of innocence applies to both.
According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, Hanning and his former office manager probably agreed in 2010 that D. would continually obtain "valuable" BND intelligence for a fee. Hanning is said to have used this information profitably for his consulting work.
According to information from the news magazine “Spiegel”, the investigation also concerns possible information being passed on to a member of the Chinese secret service apparatus. In this context, the magazine reports on Hanning's contacts with the former Chinese major general Wang Jianzheng. He is said to have thanked Hanning in a book foreword in 2017 for “hints and explanations”. The federal prosecutor's office did not confirm whether the connection to Wang was the subject of the investigation.
Hanning's lawyer rejected the allegations. “My client is being unfairly persecuted,” he explained. He denied passing on information to the detriment of Germany or for payment. Wang told the magazine that he had not had any contact with Hanning for a long time. He left it open since when this had been the case.
The Bundestag control committee now commissioned its permanent representative, the SPD politician Matthias Bartke, to carry out the so-called “ad hoc control”. As a rule, the committee determines the subject and focus of the examination. According to the information, the “ad hoc control” aims to “immediately clarify the circumstances of the suspected espionage and to make an effort to remedy existing structural and organizational problems.”
The committee recalled that it had already warned in May 2023 about problematic activities by former state employees. At that time, MPs criticized the fact that officials with “in-depth” security or intelligence knowledge were “unchecked taking up private-sector activities that are related to their previous official employment”.
At the time, MPs also rated the activities of former Bundeswehr and police members, as well as other people with such knowledge, for private or state-owned companies abroad as “worrying”. “There is a risk that skills and knowledge acquired on the job will be made available to authoritarian regimes or criminal organizations,” the committee quoted its assessment at the time. This could lead to conflicts of interests “which significantly affect the security policy concerns of the Federal Republic of Germany”.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior is also examining the Hanning case. This concerns possible violations of secrecy regulations during his time as Secretary of State for the Interior, as a ministry spokeswoman said. The review began immediately in light of the events that became known, she said.
Hanning was President of the BND from December 1998 to the end of November 2005. When he then moved to the Federal Ministry of the Interior as State Secretary, his office manager Manfred D. followed him and, according to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, was also his assistant there between December 2005 and November 2009. Hanning then switched to the private sector and worked as a security consultant. Manfred D. went back to the BND and worked again as office manager for various presidents.
Green secret service expert Konstantin von Notz is also calling for clarification about this time together in the Ministry of the Interior. Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) must “do his part to clarify the harsh events that have the makings of a real state affair”. Von Notz himself is a member of the parliamentary control committee.
At the same time, pressure is growing to regulate the professional activities of former secret service employees more strictly. The chairman of the control committee, Marc Henrichmann (CDU), said that high-ranking representatives of German security authorities could be expected to disclose contacts and contacts with an official connection. “The transparency regulations of the German Bundestag are a model,” he continues.
Hanning's later successor, Gerhard Schindler, was open to stricter regulations. "It is currently not forbidden for former secret service employees to continue to be professionally active. However, it is forbidden to reveal secrets. And of course I won't do that," he told the editorial network Germany (RND). “However, I have absolutely no objection if Parliament would regulate these activities more closely.”
Schindler was BND President from 2012 to 2016 and now works as a management consultant. The “international consulting company” Friedrich30, according to its website, lists Schindler as a “senior consultant” who has a “network of intelligence services” and “many international contacts”. Schindler told the RND that he was slowly phasing out his consulting work: "I then worked as a consultant for ten years. That's enough."
