Overview
- Federal police arrested August Hanning and his former chief of staff Manfred D. on Tuesday after coordinated raids in Rhineland and Bavaria and a judge will decide on pretrial detention.
- Prosecutors say the two men arranged from about 2010 until June 2022 for roughly 2,000 classified BND documents to be supplied for payment from inside the service to Hanning.
- Investigators allege Hanning used classified material to write an analysis for an officer of a foreign intelligence service and maintained close contact with a representative of another foreign service while the beneficiaries of the leaks have not been publicly named.
- The probe began when classified files were found during searches in an unrelated kidnapping inquiry tied to Christina Block, which prompted federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe to open the espionage case.
- The arrests have triggered demands from parliament’s intelligence oversight body for a full damage audit and renewed debate over rules that govern former officials’ access to state secrets and private consulting work.