Germany’s former top spy August Hanning was arrested on suspicion of treason and espionage after prosecutors say an ex-aide funneled him nearly 2,000 classified files tied to foreign services.
Agents arrested August Hanning on Tuesday at his home in Nordwalde near Münster. The same day, officers took former Federal Intelligence Service employee Manfred D. into custody in Bavaria.
Federal prosecutors say Hanning, who ran Germany’s foreign intelligence service from 1998 to 2005, is suspected of espionage, treason, and obtaining classified information for a foreign power. Manfred D. is charged with aiding and abetting attempted treason and treasonous espionage.
BBC reported that Hanning is due in court Wednesday. Manfred D. was scheduled to appear Tuesday.
The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office laid out a long-running pipeline. Manfred D. stayed inside the BND for years after Hanning left. Prosecutors say he used that access to pull highly confidential material and hand it over for money.
Prosecutors described the scale in blunt terms:
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,
"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,"
That is the core allegation. A former bureau chief kept the door open. A former spy chief, now a private consultant, allegedly took what only the service was supposed to hold.
Manfred D. served as Hanning’s bureau chief and later as chief of staff for Hanning’s successors between 2012 and 2026. He remained at the BND until this year. Prosecutors say the arrangement turned internal files into a paid supply line.
The case does not stop at document transfers. Prosecutors say Hanning put classified intelligence to work for outsiders.
On one occasion, they charge, he used that material to draft an analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service. Prosecutors noted it was not clear whether the finished product reached the intended recipient.
They also accuse him of a second channel:
"in close contact with a representative of another foreign intelligence service, to whom he passed on political information, partially based on material provided by Manfred D, for several years"
The foreign powers are not named. The pattern prosecutors describe is clear enough: classified German intelligence moved out of the BND, into Hanning’s hands, and toward foreign services over a stretch of years.
Investigators did not stumble into this in a vacuum. State criminal police found an electronic data storage device holding sensitive material, including recent BND documents, during work on a separate case.
That separate track involves German steakhouse heiress Christina Block. Hamburg prosecutors accused Block of orchestrating the 2023 kidnapping of her two youngest children in a custody fight. Investigators have alleged Hanning’s involvement in an earlier attempted kidnapping of Block’s children. He denies it.
Whatever the final link between the custody case and the spy files, the storage device put current BND material in front of investigators. Arrests of a former BND chief and a longtime insider followed.
This is not Germany’s first recent shock inside the intelligence ranks. In 2023, prosecutors charged high-ranking officer Carsten L. with treason. They alleged he passed state secrets to Russia, including intelligence about the war in Ukraine and the Wagner mercenary group, and took roughly €400,000. That trial is ongoing.
Two cases do not prove a single conspiracy. They do show a repeated failure mode: people trusted with the state’s most guarded files accused of moving those files for cash or foreign handlers. When the BND’s own alumni and staff stand accused of treating secrets like inventory, the damage runs past any one defendant.
Hanning headed the BND for seven years and then moved into private consulting. Manfred D. kept a senior path inside the service for more than a decade after Hanning’s exit. Prosecutors now say that continuity became the pipeline.
What remains undisclosed matters. Which foreign services allegedly sat on the other end of the contacts? What exactly sat inside those roughly 2,000 documents? Did the analysis Hanning is accused of drafting ever land with its target? Full charging papers and absolute calendar dates beyond Tuesday and Wednesday have not been laid out in the public account so far.
For now the record is the arrests, the prosecutor findings, the court calendar, and a second live treason case against another German intelligence officer. A country that cannot keep its own classified files inside its own service leaves its citizens and allies flying blind.
Secrets sold from the inside are not a paperwork error. They are a breach of the basic deal between free nations and the people sworn to guard them.
