Germany woke up Tuesday in shock after August Hanning, former head of the BND (Germany’s intelligence agency), was arrested on suspicion of espionage for a foreign power. Hours later, new details are emerging that shed light on the affair.
2+Investigators simultaneously arrested 64-year-old Manfred D., who previously served as Hanning’s chief of staff at the BND. He’s suspected of illegally providing his former boss with classified intelligence from the agency’s management levels—even after Hanning retired. Manfred worked at the agency until March 2026 in senior roles, including as chief of staff to other BND presidents.
According to the Federal Prosecutor General’s investigation, Hanning and Manfred D. agreed as early as spring 2010 that D. would obtain BND information for his former boss in exchange for payment, which Hanning could use in his private work as a security consultant. Through June 2022, investigators found, D. supplied Hanning with roughly 2,000 documents, many of them classified. These were primarily working papers and briefings for BND leadership ahead of preparing the “intelligence assessment” at the Chancellor’s office.
2+In at least one case, according to security sources, Hanning used the information to prepare an analysis for “an employee of a foreign security and intelligence apparatus.” Which foreign power that person worked for remains unclear for now, but it was not Russia. Additionally, according to the Federal Prosecutor General’s findings, Hanning maintained contact over an extended period with another intelligence employee from a different country (whose name was not specified).
Investigators apparently discovered the sensitive files while investigating a separate case—the kidnapping of the children of Christinia Block, heiress to a steakhouse chain. Employees of an Israeli security company dragged the boy and girl, who were living with their father in Denmark, into a car on New Year’s Eve 2023/2024 and brought them to Germany, where they were surprised by their mother.
2+Hanning is suspected of involvement in an earlier attempted kidnapping of the two Block children, a claim the former BND president has denied. During that period, prosecutors even planted an undercover agent in his circle. In September 2025, Hamburg police raided the offices of a security company where Hanning served on the board. His private home was also searched.
The Israeli connection continues: Yaakov Peri, former head of the Shin Bet, was previously suspected of links to the affair—along with other former Mossad operatives, one of whom incriminated her. Keren Tenenbaum, an associate of a former senior official in Unit 504, also came to testify at trial on Block’s behalf.
The arrest of a former BND president is an unprecedented event in the criminal history of the Federal Republic of Germany. What’s more, even after leaving his post as intelligence chief, Hanning continued for years as one of the most important senior figures in Germany’s security establishment: until the end of 2009, he served as deputy minister in the Interior Ministry and was a key architect of Germany’s counterterrorism laws during that period.