Ex-Intelligence Chief Arrested for Alleged Treason

August Hanning, the former president of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, the BND, has been arrested on suspicion of offenses that include attempted treason and espionage for a foreign intelligence service.

Agents with the Federal Criminal Police Office carried out the arrests under warrants issued by the investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice. Hanning and a second suspect, identified under German privacy rules only as Manfred D., were detained in Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen county in Bavaria and in Steinfurt county in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office said Hanning is strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, spying out state secrets, attempted treason, and acting as an intelligence agent, citing sections 96, 94, and 99 of the German Criminal Code. Manfred D. is charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage. Both suspects were scheduled to appear before the investigating judge for a pre-trial detention hearing on Tuesday.

Hanning led the BND from December 1998 until the end of November 2005. He then served as state secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior from December 2005 to November 2009. Manfred D. was his chief of staff at the BND and later worked as his assistant during the Interior Ministry period.

From March 2012 until March 2026, Manfred D. again served as chief of staff to subsequent BND presidents and, prosecutors say, had access to confidential material. According to the arrest warrants, the two men agreed in the spring of 2010 that Manfred D. would continue to pass valuable BND intelligence to Hanning in return for payment, after Hanning had left government service and started private consulting work.

“The current findings suggest that, over the years, Manfred D. provided Hanning with approximately two thousand documents, many of which contained classified information to be used exclusively by the Federal Intelligence Service for internal purposes, particularly for executive intelligence briefings,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors allege that, on one occasion, Hanning used classified material supplied by Manfred D. to draft an analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service. They said it has not yet been established whether that material reached the intended recipient. They further allege that Hanning remained in close contact for several years with a representative of a second foreign intelligence service and passed that person political information, some of it based on documents from Manfred D.

German outlet NDR reported that the foreign service for which the analysis was prepared is not believed to be Russian, while noting that the authorities have not identified either service.