The man who led Germany’s intelligence agency from 1998 to 2005 has been arrested on suspicion of espionage and attempted treason, according to the country’s federal prosecutor’s office. The office announced on Tuesday that August Hanning, 80, was arrested and faces charges including “treasonous espionage, obtaining state secrets, attempted treason” through contact with foreign intelligence services. The office has not specified which country or countries Hanning is accused of working for.
Citing unnamed sources, however, German news outlet Der Spiegel reported that Hanning was in contact with an Azerbaijan intelligence agency representative. In 2025, prosecutors also accused Hanning of ties with Israeli spies in a separate case which ultimately led them to the ex-intelligence boss’s alleged espionage for other agencies. If found guilty, treason carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in Germany.
German news outlet Deutsche Welle described Hanning’s arrest as Germany’s “biggest espionage scandal of the century”. Born in Nordwalde, Westphalia, western Germany, in 1946, Hanning served as the head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005 and later moved to work in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, before working as a state secretary until 2009. He later worked as a private consultant.
German media showed pictures of Hanning being taken from his red-brick house in Norwalde, close to Munster, to a bulletproof vehicle by masked officers on Tuesday morning. They claim Hanning used classified intelligence to “draft an analysis” for a foreign intelligence service and kept “close contact” with another foreign spying service for “several years” while he was working as a private consultant. They say that in 2010, Hanning came to an agreement to receive confidential information from his former bureau chief – who was in office until March this year and is named only as “Manfred D” – and was preparing to provide an “analysis” of it to a foreign power in exchange for money.
It is unclear if the analysis was duly shared. However, Hanning is also alleged to have passed on potentially sensitive political information, partly based on information provided by Manfred D, to a contact representing a separate foreign intelligence service. Manfred D was also arrested on Tuesday and charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage.
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”, it added. The alleged espionage by Hanning and Manfred D was uncovered during an investigation into a separate kidnapping case involving German businesswoman and steakhouse chain heiress, Christina Block. In that case, Hamburg prosecutors accused Block of arranging the kidnapping of her two youngest children in 2023 due to a custody dispute.
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