August Hanning, the former head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) whose arrest was announced on Oct. 6, may have passed classified documents to an agent from Azerbaijan, according to an investigation by Der Spiegel. Hanning, who was detained on suspicion of espionage and disclosure of state secrets, allegedly prepared an analytical report for Azerbaijani intelligence. Manfred D., the former head of Hanning’s office, was also detained.
According to investigators cited by Der Spiegel, the former BND head unlawfully obtained 2,000 classified documents and may have shared them while communicating with a foreign agent, though it remains unknown whether Hanning’s analysis reached the recipient, and German authorities have not officially confirmed that they suspect the former intelligence chief of working for Baku. His connection to Azerbaijan, however, is beyond doubt: he was officially a member of the board of the German-Azerbaijani Forum.
Hanning headed the BND from December 1998 to November 2005. According to prosecutors, in 2010 Hanning made an arrangement with Manfred D. to receive information from the BND in exchange for payment. Hanning intended to use the documents he received in his private consulting business. According to the German outlets Süddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, and WDR, the documents included materials from foreign partner agencies, documents on Iran’s nuclear program, and documents on the Russian military.
In at least one instance, Hanning is known to have prepared a security report for an unnamed foreign intelligence service (not a Russian one, according to media reports). Meanwhile, after leaving the BND, Hanning made at least seven trips to Russia, The Insider found — all of them within the period from 2015 to 2019.
Often, Hanning would fly into Moscow in the evening and fly out the next day. In the summer of 2016 he flew from Munich to Moscow on the evening of July 6 and flew out to Berlin on the afternoon of July 7. A similar trip between Berlin and Moscow took place in May 2019.
The investigation into Hanning has continued for several months. He came to the attention of law enforcement last year in connection with his possible involvement in the abduction of the children of Hamburg businesswoman Christina Block. As part of that case, Hanning’s home was searched in September 2025; some of the BND documents were found during those searches.
