BERLIN — Former German intelligence chief August Hanning angrily challenged his successor after learning that the agency he once headed, the BND, had passed allegations that he was a Russian spy to investigators. 

In a three-page letter sent on Aug. 17, less than three months before his arrest this week, Hanning demanded answers to 11 questions from BND President Martin Jäger.

In the letter, obtained by WELT — which, like POLITICO, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network — Hanning complained that the BND had passed allegations by a former intelligence agent that he was a Russian spy to investigators without consulting him.

Jäger did not respond to the letter at the time, according to Hanning, who spoke to WELT before his arrest.

Hanning’s subsequent arrest, including on suspicion of attempted treason, has caused considerable concern abroad. Grzegorz Malecki, the former head of Poland’s foreign intelligence service, told WELT that the case was “extremely concerning” and could deepen allies’ distrust of the BND. He warned this had the potential to undermine intelligence-sharing with Germany.

The BND has also raised eyebrows within Germany’s intelligence community over allegations that it allowed Hanning’s former chief of staff, who is also in custody, to work for Hanning outside his official duties.

While civil servants are generally permitted to take on outside employment, any approval allowing a member of the BND to work for Hanning would have had to be decided at the senior management level, said Günter Heiss, a former intelligence coordinator under former Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Without knowing the details, I would never have approved anything like this had I been in a position of responsibility at the BND.”

Bernd Schmidbauer, a former minister of state and intelligence coordinator under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, told WELT that Hanning had made major contributions to Germany’s national security. The affair was therefore “not only a tragedy for the German intelligence services, but also for the former senior official himself,” Schmidbauer said.

Hanning was among Schmidbauer’s closest aides during the 1990s and went on to lead the BND from 1998 to 2005.

Dirk Banse is an investigative reporter at WELT. Philipp Fritz is WELT’s Eastern Europe correspondent. Uwe Müller is a freelance reporter based in Berlin.

The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet, The Telegraph, and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms: online, print, TV and audio. 

August Hanning spent seven years at the top of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, with access to some of the country’s most closely guarded secrets. Then came a second act: private consulting, corporate intelligence and business stretching across Europe, into Russia and Asia.

Now, the 80-year-old former spymaster is himself at the center of an espionage investigation, after German federal prosecutors arrested him Tuesday on suspicion of treasonous espionage, attempted treason and other espionage offenses. They allege he obtained a stream of secret intelligence from his former chief of staff and used the material to benefit his private consulting business.

“It’s catastrophic for Germany and for Western intelligence services. Everyone is in shock. The scale of it is enormous, especially at a moment like this,” said one EU intelligence official, who — like others in this report — was granted anonymity to discuss a clandestine arena. “And given that investigators stumbled across this while working on an entirely separate case, we’re likely to learn much more.”

For the BND, the case comes at an uncomfortable moment. Just last week, German parliamentarians began debating a new law proposed by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government to grant the agency sweeping new authority, as part of an effort to return Berlin’s foreign intelligence service to the top ranks of global espionage. The timing is equally awkward for European intelligence more broadly. With Russian hybrid attacks continuously targeting Europe, governments across the bloc are rewriting decades-old security laws to give their spy agencies greater powers and be taken more seriously.

Prosecutors say Hanning’s former chief of staff, identified under German privacy rules as Manfred D., supplied him with roughly 2,000 BND documents between 2010 and June 2022. Many contained classified information intended exclusively for internal intelligence work, including material used to brief senior German officials.

In comments to German newspaper WELT, a lawyer representing Hanning said some of the allegations against the ex-spymaster were true but that he did not harm Germany.

“He was in possession of confidential documents. Incorrect, however, is the accusation that he had passed on information contained therein to the detriment of the Federal Republic of Germany — let alone [for] payment. Further investigations will show that,” he said.

In one case, prosecutors suspect Hanning used classified material to prepare an analysis for an employee of foreign intelligence service. They also allege he maintained a relationship with a representative of another foreign intelligence service for several years, passing along political information that was partly based on material obtained from Manfred D.

Prosecutors have not publicly identified either foreign service but German media has named Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Azerbaijan has denied any connection.

“In intelligence services, everything is logged — who accesses which documents and when. If an analyst working on right-wing extremism suddenly started looking at intelligence on China, that would raise red flags. But the position of chief of staff has access to virtually everything, so it wouldn’t look suspicious because of the seniority of the position,” said a second EU intelligence official.

Chiefs of staff often stay on when directors change, unless they don’t get along with the incoming boss, the official added.

“Every intelligence service will now be looking at what information it shared with the BND and assessing what damage may have been done,” he said.

Revolving door

Hanning led the BND from 1998 to 2005, before serving as state secretary at Germany’s interior ministry until 2009. Once out of government, he wasted little time entering the private sector.

In July 2010, Hanning and his wife established Hanning Consult. It was in the spring of that same year that Manfred D. agreed to provide him with intelligence from inside the BND in exchange for payment, according to the prosecutor’s statement. Hanning then used that information in his private consulting activities, they added.

Roderich Kiesewetter, a Christian Democrat lawmaker on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the German parliament, said that within Germany there is a “very widespread network” of people who use the contacts and knowledge acquired while they were in service to influence Berlin’s policy on behalf of foreign governments like Russia and China.

“It’s not only sad, it’s damaging the reputation of Germany,” Kiesewetter told POLITICO. “You could also say if you want to talk to Russia, take former members of the government or former members of the secret services.”

Hanning also became involved with Samuel Danilowitsch, a German businessman, who led the Swiss corporate intelligence consultancy, Pluteos. There, Hanning eventually became chairman and the two were listed as attending a 2019 Moscow gathering focused on Europe-Russia relations, attended by Russian political and business figures, where the annexation of Crimea was brought up as a “necessity” rather than a choice. Pluteos did not respond to a request for comment.

From around 2014, Hanning joined British consultancy G3 as a senior adviser, according to archived web pages seen by POLITICO. He later oversaw its work involving Russia and the former Soviet republics, according to German media outlet Correctiv. G3 did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2019, Hanning was invited as a “guest of honor” to a gathering organized by Russia’s Security Council of officials and experts from Arctic Council countries. It was chaired by former secretary of the Security Council of Russia, Nikolai Patrushev, one of the most powerful figures in President Vladimir Putin’s security orbit. As part of the cultural program, the group visited the remote Valaam Island monastery where Hanning was pictured next to Patrushev.

Hanning has also publicly ventured into some of the more politically explosive questions surrounding Russia’s war on Ukraine.

In 2024, he told WELT TV that he considered it “very likely” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy knew about the 2022 operation that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines. Days later, Hanning went further, suggesting an agreement between senior Ukrainian and Polish figures was behind the attack. Germany has since charged a Ukrainian national it identified only as Serhii K., with his trial due to begin in Hamburg in October.

None of those business relationships, contacts or statements establishes a connection to the espionage case now facing Hanning, though they paint a picture of the influence he continued to amass after leaving the German government. Prosecutors have not accused him of spying for Russia.

The steakhouse heiress

Investigators got onto Hanning’s trail starting with an extraordinary custody dispute involving Christina Block, an heiress to a German steakhouse empire.

Block is accused by the Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office of orchestrating the abduction of her two youngest children from their father in Denmark. Prosecutors in that case say Block and two men commissioned an Israeli security team to seize her children, then aged 10 and 13, from their father, Stephan Hensel.

According to the indictment, masked men beat Hensel and took the children across the Danish-German border, to southern Germany. The children were reunited with their father in Denmark four days later, under a court order. Block denies knowing about the abduction.

In September 2025, Hamburg investigators searched Hanning’s home and business premises in connection with the Block case, according to local media. Prosecutors suspected Hanning and a retired police officer had accepted a contract worth more than €100,000 to intercept the children on their way to school in November 2022. The plan ultimately failed as their father noticed suspicious figures and alerted Danish police. 

German broadcaster Taggeschau reported that the investigators, in the search of Hanning’s premises, discovered around 2,000 digital BND documents that ultimately triggered scrutiny of his handling of sensitive government information. Federal prosecutors took over the resulting investigation in May 2026.

Manfred D. had been Hanning’s chief of staff at the intelligence service and subsequently served several of Hanning’s successors, remaining in a senior position until March this year. 

Both men are now in custody.

“He’s reflecting the Germany between 1998 and 2011, so he has not the feeling of having done something evil,” said Kiesewetter. “He was just mirroring [the] state policy of the center-right Christian Democratic and conservative political alliance.”

Hans von der Burchard contributed to this report. 

Ein Geheimdienstskandal erschüttert Berlin: Hat der ehemalige BND-Chef August Hanning hochsensible Regierungsdaten an Aserbaidschan weitergegeben? Während der aktuelle BND-Chef Martin Jäger Anfang der Woche vor Sicherheitsrisiken warnt, droht sein Dienst selbst zur Gefahr zu werden. Hans von der Burchard ordnet ein, wie die Affäre das internationale Vertrauen in Deutschland beschädigt.

Im Kanzleramt rollen derweil die Dienstwagen zum Koalitionsausschuss an. Zwischen Union und SPD geht es erneut um Schmerzgrenzen, sei es beim Tankrabatt, dem Kurs gegen China oder der umstrittenen Zuckersteuer. Rasmus Buchsteiner analysiert, ob das Krisentreffen die ewige Blockade löst oder die Partner endgültig in die Sackgasse führt.

Genau diese Zuckersteuer sorgt für Zündstoff, nachdem sie vorerst vom Kanzleramt gestoppt wurde. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview erklärt SPD-Fraktionsvize Wiebke Esdar, warum die Abgabe aus ihrer Sicht dennoch kommen muss.

Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Rixa Fürsen, Maximilian Stascheit und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.

POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH
Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin
Tel: +49 (30) 2591 0
information@axelspringer.de
Sitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 B
USt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390
Geschäftsführer: Christoph Eck-Schmidt, Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna

LONDON — A seventh man has been arrested as part of an investigation into the suspected terror plot around the RAF Fairford airbase, Britain’s Counter Terrorism Policing said on Tuesday.

The statement said that a 22-year-old British man was arrested on suspicion of the preparation of terrorist acts under Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006.

This is the seventh arrest in the live investigation into events surrounding a suspected terror plot near the RAF Fairford airbase, which has been used by the United States to conduct defensive strikes against Iran.

Five British men were arrested on Sunday, 27 September, on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act and preparation of a terrorist act, after police were alerted to three suspicious vehicles near the airbase. No improvised explosive devices were found in the vehicles, but investigators recovered a quantity of petrol.

On Thursday, Counter Terrorism Policing arrested a 25-year-old British-Iranian man for the same offense as part of investigations. All six men were later released on bail.

On Sunday, the Pentagon confirmed that the U.S. had withdrawn all B-1 bombers from the airbase. The following day, U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters that the United States had known of a “threat” which led them to move the bombers.

Counter-terror police — supported by the MI5 intelligence service — are currently investigating “possible foreign state involvement” as part of their enquiries.

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said the government believes “Iran to have played a part” in the incident.