Arrested an ex-head of German intelligence accused of spying for a foreign country

BarcelonaA former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND), August Hanning, was arrested this Tuesday accused of spying for a foreign country, according to the Office of the Prosecutor General. Authorities suspect that Hanning, who presided over the BND between 1998 and 2005, attempted to commit high treason by acting in the service of an intelligence agency of another country once he had already left office. According to the Prosecutor's statement, he is being investigated for alleged espionage constituting high treason, obtaining state secrets, attempted high treason, and activities as an intelligence agent.

Hanning was arrested in Bad Toelz-Wolfratshausen, in southern Germany, by agents of the Criminal Investigation Office, who also searched properties in Berlin related to the accused. The Prosecutor's Office has not revealed which country he allegedly spied for. According to the newspaper Welt, for several years there have been suspicions that the former German intelligence chief collaborated with the Russian security service FSB. But according to an investigation by German media, including the public broadcasters WDR and NDR, the foreign intelligence services with which Hanning allegedly cooperated do not include those of Russia.

In addition, the police have arrested an alleged accomplice, identified as Manfred D., who was Hanning's chief of staff when he presided over the intelligence services and was also his assistant when he was state secretary at the Interior Ministry, between 2005 and 2009. This second detainee later worked for other BND presidents and is suspected of having taken advantage of his role as chief of staff to provide confidential information to Hanning, who worked as a private security consultant when he left public office.

Sale of classified information

According to the Prosecutor's statement, presumably in 2010 Hanning agreed for Manfred D. to continuously obtain valuable information from the Federal Intelligence Service and pass it on to him in exchange for payment, so that he could use it "profitably within the framework of his private consulting work."

The Prosecutor's Office accuses Manfred D. of providing Hanning with nearly 2,000 documents, "including many pieces of information classified as confidential" and which were intended exclusively for the internal use of intelligence services. In addition, Hanning maintained an intense exchange with a member of another intelligence service, without specifying from which country, to whom he supplied political information for years.

Hanning will appear this Tuesday and Wednesday before the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice, who will decide on his imprisonment. This is not the first case of alleged espionage in the German intelligence services: in 2022 a high-ranking official identified as Carsten L. was already arrested as a suspect of being a Russian double agent, although the trial against him has not yet concluded.

The alleged possession of intelligence documents by Hanning came to light during the investigation of a case related to the businesswoman Christina Block, accused of trying to kidnap two of her children, whom her ex-husband had taken to Denmark during a custody dispute. The Hamburg prosecutor's office accused Block of orchestrating the kidnapping in 2023 and investigators allege that Hanning was involved in a previous kidnapping attempt of the children, which he denies. According to local media, state criminal police officers discovered a data storage device that contained confidential information, including recent BND documents.