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Europe|German Officials Arrest Former Spy Chief on Espionage Charges

August Hanning in 2007, after he left the German intelligence service. Credit…Abdelhak Senna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The federal police in Germany arrested a former head of the nation’s intelligence services on Tuesday on suspicion of “treasonous espionage” and other spying charges, including attempting to pass state secrets to foreign governments.

The federal prosecutor’s office announced it had detained the former spy chief, August Hanning, 80 — who led Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, from 1998 to 2005 — but did not say which foreign countries he was accused of helping.

The prosecutors said they had also arrested a former chief of staff to Mr. Hanning at the agency, who they said sold 2,000 government documents to Mr. Hanning — many of them classified — in the years after Mr. Hanning left his post and worked as a consultant, joining several corporate boards.

Mr. Hanning, the prosecutors said, had used some of the classified information to create an analysis for a foreign intelligence officer. He also supplied a representative of a separate foreign intelligence service with information over the years, the prosecutors said.

The arrest of a former spy chief, at a time of increased tension between Germany and rival foreign powers like China and Russia, shook the German political establishment.

Adding to the drama was the revelation, from prosecutors, that the investigation had origins in a separate, high-profile investigation into an alleged attempt by a German steakhouse heiress to kidnap her children from her estranged husband. The prosecutor’s office searched Mr. Hanning’s office in September 2025 as part of its investigation into that heiress, Christina Block, and discovered material that initiated the examination of Mr. Hanning.

The German news media has reported that Mr. Hanning has struggled financially in recent years, and his consulting business has drawn scrutiny. Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s leading news outlets, reported in 2023 that he had lost much of his pension in the fallout from his role in a failure of a Latvian bank in 2019.

Mr. Hanning appears to be the first former head of the intelligence service to be accused by prosecutors of espionage. But the agency has been rocked by other spying scandals in recent years.

In 2023, prosecutors arrested a manager at the agency, Carsten Linke, and accused him of selling highly classified material to Moscow even as Russia waged war on Ukraine.

Mr. Linke was charged with high treason and put on trial. The proceedings, which have been underway for more than three years, are expected to last at least until January. Mr. Linke could face life imprisonment if convicted.

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting from Magdeburg, Germany.

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