The former president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), August Hanning, has been arrested. According to information from ZEIT, the Federal Prosecutor General is investigating the 80-year-old and a BND employee. Hanning is therefore accused of treasonous spying, spying on state secrets, attempted treason and secret service agent activity. His former office manager is also accused of aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous spying. According to a spokesman, the federal government did not want to comment on the case “because of the ongoing investigation.”
According to the Federal Prosecutor General, the suspects were arrested in the Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district in Bavaria and in the Steinfurt district in North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition, rooms in Berlin were searched. According to ZEIT information, Hanning came into the focus of investigators as part of the block trial. As part of the investigation into the kidnapping of the children of the steakhouse heiress Christina Block, Hanning's rooms were searched in September 2025, among other things. Objects were found that triggered the investigation against Hanning for espionage.
According to ZEIT information, the essence is that Hanning, as a pensioner, had the BND briefings delivered to him for a strictly confidential weekly meeting in the Chancellery, the so-called ND situation. According to reports, he paid an employee in the intelligence service's management staff to pass the document through his hands. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, he is said to have made a good 2,000 documents available to Hanning over the years.
The investigators are therefore investigating the suspicion that Hanning used the content for his activities as a consultant for various companies and possibly even wanted to sell it. In at least one case, he is said to have passed on information to a foreign intelligence service. According to the Federal Prosecutor General, it has “not yet been possible to determine” whether these have actually reached the addressees. The Reuters news agency even wrote that he is said to have prepared an analysis for an employee of a foreign secret service. He is said to have supplied another intelligence officer from another country with political information for years. According to the AFP news agency, it was said to be the same person.
Konstantin von Notz from the Greens demanded that any damage caused to intelligence services must be clarified by the federal government as quickly as possible. “This is an iron-hard and unfathomable story,” von Notz told Spiegel. "We expect a rapid and complete clarification of the outrageous allegations against the former BND boss Hanning," said the member of the Bundestag's Parliamentary Control Committee. The private business of former intelligence chiefs would have to be restricted after their term in office.
“The responsible committees must receive all the necessary information in order to be able to fully clarify the process,” demanded the domestic policy spokesman for the Green parliamentary group, Marcel Emmerich, in the Rheinische Post. In a process that could potentially affect Germany's security and trust in state institutions, there should be "no unanswered questions."
The deputy chairwoman and domestic policy spokeswoman for the left-wing faction in the Bundestag, Clara Bünger, generally described the secret services as a security risk. "We've known this since the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution became involved in the series of murders by neo-Nazi terrorists from the NSU," she said. "The fact that a man like Hans-Georg Maaßen headed a German secret service until a few years ago also speaks volumes."
CDU intelligence expert Marc Henrichmann, however, viewed the arrest of former intelligence chief August Hanning as positive. "The state is sending an important signal to the outside world as well as to the inside: working with secret information is a question of national security and not a petty crime," Henrichmann told the AFP news agency.
