On 6 October 2026, German investigators in the Bavarian town of Bad Tölz arrested 80-year-old August Hanning, the man who headed Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from December 1998 to November 2005 and who, until 2009, served as State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior. At the same time in Steinfurt, his former head of the chancellery, Manfred D., was detained; he had retained access to the agency’s most sensitive materials under several successive BND presidents until March 2026. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office charged Hanning with high treason in the form of espionage, obtaining state secrets, and intelligence activity. Notably, the scandal broke at the very moment when Friedrich Merz’s government was preparing a large-scale expansion of BND powers, and the current head of the service, Martin Jäger, was warning the Bundestag about an ongoing hybrid “shadow war” against the country.
According to the investigation materials, the mechanisms for trading secrets had been operating since spring 2010, when Hanning and Manfred D. concluded an “agreement” under which Manfred D., an active BND official, would regularly supply the former chief with secret materials in exchange for monetary payment. For fourteen years, until June 2022, he regularly handed over classified documents to the former boss. In total, roughly 2,000 confidential materials were removed from the intelligence service. These included internal BND assessments, regular briefings for the Office of the Federal Chancellor, dossiers on the Iranian nuclear program, analysis of the Russian army, and intelligence data obtained from allied services. Hanning used them in his private consulting practice.
After leaving public service, Hanning actively monetized the access he had gained. In 2010 he and his wife founded the company “Hanning Consult”; he later held positions at the Swiss firm “Pluteos AG” and the British structure G3 (where he was responsible for Russia and the CIS countries), sat on the supervisory board of the Latvian “PNB Banka” (linked to Russian businessmen), and held a stake in “GSC4,” a company specializing in business intelligence in the CIS, China, and the Arab world. According to investigations, between 2015 and 2019 Hanning made at least seven short trips to Moscow, often on a “there in the evening – back the next day” basis and also served on the board of the German-Azerbaijani Forum. Some of the leaked secrets were used by him to prepare reports for the benefit of employees of foreign intelligence services. Although publications in Der Spiegel mentioned a possible connection with an Azerbaijani representative, the official authorities did not name the client country, and German intelligence is examining a direct Russian or Chinese trail in Hanning’s contacts.
The Hanning case exposed the fundamental problem of the so-called “revolving door”—the transition of high-ranking officials and politicians into commercial companies or lobbying structures they previously oversaw—and the vulnerabilities of European intelligence services. The loyalty and authority of the former chief allowed the insider to remove documents for years without undergoing internal checks. The absence of strict legislative restrictions on the work of former intelligence officers in commercial consulting turned state secrets into an ordinary market commodity.
Although a direct link between Hanning and Moscow or Beijing has not yet been officially confirmed, both powers are constant consumers of “weak links” in the protection of Western secrets. The BND has already faced similar cases, and the role and scale of Russian intelligence presence in Germany are confirmed by several previous high-profile affairs. In December 2022, Karsten L., the former head of the technical intelligence unit, was arrested. According to the prosecutor’s office, he passed secret materials to the Russian FSB through an intermediary, Arthur E. In particular, the materials concerned data related to the war in Ukraine. For his services, the investigation claims Karsten L. received at least €450,000, while the intermediary received about €400,000. The then BND chief Bruno Kahl spoke of “severe reputational damage.” The trial is ongoing; the accused denies guilt.
In September 2026 the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) in its annual report explicitly called Germany a “priority target of Russian espionage activity,” citing its geostrategic position in NATO, the expansion of the Bundeswehr, and the appearance of new weapons. BND head Martin Jäger spoke in October 2026 of a “shadow war” being waged by Russia.
The Chinese trail looks different but is no less systematic. In September 2025 a court in Dresden sentenced Jian Guo, a former assistant to Alternative for Germany (AfD) Member of the European Parliament Maximilian Krah, to four years and nine months in prison. The prosecutor’s office called it “the most unpleasant case of Chinese espionage in Germany to date.” Guo had worked for Chinese intelligence for nearly 20 years; he collected data on dissidents and passed confidential European Parliament documents as well as information about military cargoes through Leipzig Airport. His accomplice Yaci S. received a suspended sentence of one year and nine months. German services note Beijing’s interest in dual-use technologies, AI, quantum developments, and military infrastructure.
According to a study by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) covering the period from 2008 to 2024, of 70 spies convicted in 20 European countries, 47 (two-thirds) worked for Russia and 6 for China. In this ranking Estonia led with 19 convictions, while Germany was in second place with 8.
To date, the most serious consequence of the scandal surrounding the BND has been the shaken trust of NATO partners and the Five Eyes alliance. The events demonstrated that carelessness and corruption loopholes inside the system pose no less a danger to European intelligence than direct agent penetration. The chairman of the Bundestag’s Parliamentary Control Committee, Konstantin von Notz, and opposition representatives sharply raised the question of the service’s ability to protect data transmitted by allies.
The August Hanning case is not yet concluded. The presumption of innocence remains, but it is already clear that the problem lies not only with individual people but with the system that allows the leakage of secret information. It is obvious that neutralizing systemic threats requires not merely another investigation, but a radical reform of the entire counterintelligence system.
