Germany's Federal Prosecutor General ordered the arrest of August Hanning, the 80-year-old former head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), in early-morning raids on October 6. The Federal Criminal Police Office detained Hanning on strong suspicion of treasonous espionage, obtaining state secrets, attempted treason, and working for a foreign intelligence service. He is the first former BND chief ever taken into custody since the agency's founding in the 1950s. Also arrested was his former chief of staff, a onetime BND official identified only as "Manfred D."
According to the prosecutor's statement, Hanning and Manfred D. struck an arrangement in the spring of 2010: Manfred D. would be paid to funnel BND internal documents to Hanning on an ongoing basis, through June 2022 — roughly 2,000 files in total. Most were classified materials for BND internal use only, including high-level intelligence briefings prepared for the Chancellery. Manfred D. served as chief of staff to a succession of BND presidents from 2012 to 2026, a post that gave him access to vast amounts of secret information. He faces charges of aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage, and was ordered into pre-trial detention by an investigative judge of the Federal Court of Justice on Tuesday afternoon; Hanning is expected to appear on Wednesday.
The prosecution's case sketches a profit motive: Hanning allegedly bought classified information from the former BND employee and monetized it through his private consulting business, founded with his wife after his 2010 retirement. The statement says he used classified material at least once to write an analysis for a foreign intelligence officer and provided political information to another foreign intelligence operative over the years. The prosecutors have not officially disclosed which countries were involved; German media citing investigators say Russia was not among them, while Der Spiegel — via The Times — reported the analysis went to Azerbaijan, a claim not confirmed by the prosecution.
The espionage case has a dramatic origin: in September 2025, Hamburg prosecutors searching Hanning's office in connection with heiress Christina Block's alleged plot to kidnap her own children stumbled on data carriers holding classified material. The case was handed to the Federal Prosecutor General in May 2026. Bild reports Hanning fell into financial difficulty after being stripped of his civil-service pension — he was also among nine people sued for €32 million by the insolvency administrator of Latvia's PNB Bank, where he sat on the advisory board. Current BND chief Martin Jäger said there would be "no compromise on internal security," while a German government spokesman declined comment citing the ongoing investigation. Under German law, each treason or espionage charge carries six months to life in prison.