Former German foreign intelligence chief August Hanning was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of espionage and treason, federal prosecutors said — a stunning case that German media say could become one of the largest spy scandals in the history of the Federal Republic.
Hanning, 80, led the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence service, from December 1998 to November 2005. The federal prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe says he is "strongly suspected of treasonous espionage, spying out state secrets, attempted treason, and espionage." He was arrested in the Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district of Bavaria, CNN and the Associated Press report.
The Arrests
Alongside Hanning, investigators arrested his former chief of staff, identified only as Manfred D., in Steinfurt in western Germany. Manfred D. served as Hanning's chief of staff during his BND tenure — and then kept the same job under Hanning's successors from March 2012 until March 2026, giving him two decades of access to confidential material. He is charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage.
Both men are expected before an investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice, which will decide on pre-trial detention. Properties linked to both suspects, including sites in Berlin, are being searched.
The 2,000-Document Pipeline
According to prosecutors, the two men struck their arrangement in the spring of 2010 — after Hanning had left public service and set up a private consulting firm with his wife. In exchange for payment, Manfred D. would "continuously transmit valuable intelligence" from the BND to Hanning, who intended to "profitably exploit" it through his consulting work.
"The current findings suggest that, over the years, Manfred D. provided Hanning with approximately 2,000 documents, many of which contained classified information to be used exclusively by the federal intelligence service for internal purposes, particularly for executive intelligence briefings," the prosecutors' statement says.
Investigative reporting by NDR, SWR and Süddeutsche Zeitung found the most recent documents reached Hanning as late as June 2022, and that the material included chancellery briefings on topics such as Russia's military and Iran's nuclear programme — some of it originally supplied to the BND by friendly foreign intelligence agencies.
What He Is Accused of Selling — and to Whom
Prosecutors allege that on at least one occasion, Hanning used the classified material to draft a security analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service — though it remains unclear whether the analysis ever reached its intended recipient. He is also accused of maintaining close contact for years with a representative of another foreign intelligence service, passing on political information partly based on material supplied by Manfred D.
Which country received the briefing has not been made public — though NDR, SWR and Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Russia had been ruled out.
Fallout in Berlin
The arrest is a significant blow for Chancellor Friedrich Merz and for the BND itself. Current BND chief Martin Jäger, appointed with a mandate to restore the agency's reputation and expand its powers, said the service had launched extensive internal investigations at an early stage: "For the BND and for me, there can be no compromises regarding internal security."
The news broke just one day after Jäger and the heads of Germany's domestic and military intelligence services faced a regular question-and-answer session in parliament, where a bill to beef up the powers of the BND and the domestic intelligence agency is currently making its way through.
The investigation began after evidence surfaced during a September 2025 search of Hanning's property in a separate Hamburg case involving businesswoman Christina Block; the federal prosecutor's office took over the matter in May 2026.
The takeaway: if the allegations hold, the Hanning case would rank among Germany's biggest postwar espionage scandals — a former spymaster accused of selling the secrets of the very agency he once led.
Watch: newstime's video report on the arrest of ex-BND chief August Hanning (in German).
Music: Kevin MacLeod - Long Road Ahead B (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources: Reuters, CNN / Associated Press, The Times, Daily Sabah