Ex-BND President August Hanning, who is suspected of espionage, is to be brought before an investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe today.
Hanning was arrested yesterday in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Prosecutor's Office accuses him of acting as a secret service agent, treasonous spying, spying on state secrets and attempted treason. An investigating judge should announce the arrest warrant against Hanning and decide whether to pre-trial detention.
Hanning's former office manager at the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), Manfred D., is already in custody for aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous spying.
Accusation: passing on secret information
According to the information, Hanning and D. probably agreed in 2010 that the ex-office manager should continually provide the ex-BND boss, who had left office five years earlier, with valuable BND intelligence in return for payment.
Hanning is said to have used these profitably in his consulting work. According to the status of the investigation, D. is said to have provided his former boss with almost 2,000 documents by June 2022.
Accordingly, Hanning would have had information over a period of possibly twelve years that was intended exclusively for internal matters of the German foreign secret service.
Analysis for Azerbaijan Secret Service?
In one case, he is said to have used secret information to prepare an analysis for an employee of a foreign intelligence security apparatus. “It has not yet been possible to determine whether the product reached the addressee,” said the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. Which country it was about remained unclear.
According to information from the news magazine Der Spiegel, investigators are investigating the suspicion that Hanning was in contact with an agent from Azerbaijan. Hanning was a member of the board of the "German-Azerbaijani Forum", a lobby association that is close to the autocratic government of the Caucasus republic. The Federal Prosecutor's Office did not want to comment on the report.
Demands for stricter parental leave rules
When it comes to clarification, “no stone should be left unturned,” emphasized the head of the Parliamentary Control Committee for the Intelligence Services, Marc Henrichmann (CDU), in the ARD-Tagesthemen.
He answered the question of whether the rules that were tightened years ago were sufficient for officials after they leave office: "We will now also have to look at the question: What do officials do after their active time? There were tightened rules a few years ago. Is that enough, is the question. Personally, I now believe: no."
Hanning headed the Federal Intelligence Service from 1998 to 2005, after which he was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Hanning then switched to the private sector and worked as a security consultant.
Notz: Warned as early as 2023
Politicians from the SPD and the Greens also called for stricter parental leave rules for retired intelligence service employees. The Vice President of the German Bundestag, Omid Nouripour, told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: "The Hanning case shows how sensitive private-sector consulting jobs are for former top secret keepers." The federal government should examine follow-up jobs and prohibit them from lobbying in the security sector after leaving office, demanded the Green politician.
Nouripour's party colleague Konstantin von Notz also criticized the sideline jobs of former employees. In May 2023, the Parliamentary Control Committee explicitly warned against the problematic secondary activities of top secret keepers, said von Notz. "The fact that these obvious security problems have not been remedied is a serious mistake," he wrote on Platform X.
“The case clearly shows that we need to further tighten the parental leave rules for former intelligence service executives,” says SPD domestic politician Sonja Eichwede. A lifelong waiting period is needed for former leading employees.
