1
August Hanning was born in 1946 to a wealthy family in the British occupation zone of Germany.
His father owned a brick factory, and Hanning himself dreamed of a chess career as a child, not of intelligence. At the age of 17, he and his friends founded a chess club, which later made it to the second division of the German championship. Hanning never became a professional, but he reached a level that today would correspond to a rating of 2 100 Elo — in Ukraine, this is the level of a candidate for master of sports.
Then Hanning had a classic career as a German civil servant. He graduated from law school, received a doctorate, worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Law, a court clerk and a lawyer in the tax administration of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
From there he moved to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, and in 1981 to the Federal Chancellery. There, for five years, he headed the department responsible for the environment, nature conservation and the safety of nuclear reactors.
Hanning first crossed paths with intelligence, as far as is known now, in 1986. Before German reunification in 1990, he was responsible for security at the German mission in East Germany, which effectively functioned as an embassy. Hanning helped ransom political prisoners — the East German authorities released them to the West for a certain amount of currency.
August Hanning in 1998, a few days before being appointed head of intelligence. The permanent representation of West Germany in East Germany opened in 1974. After reunification, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research was housed in this building.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
In the same years, the Chinese embassy in East Berlin was staffed by an officer and diplomat named Wang Jianzhen, with whom Hanning became close friends. Later, Wang rose to the rank of major general, became one of the leading Chinese experts in Germany, and returned to serve there twice more — the last time in 2013 as a military attaché.
He translated the memoirs of the last GDR premier Hans Modrow into Chinese, and a book of conversations with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. In the foreword to it, Wang thanked Hanning for his “hints and explanations”.
After retiring from civil service, Hanning traveled to China several times and met with his old comrade. The last time they appeared together in public was in 2023 — at the Europe-China conference.
During German reunification in 1990, Hanning became close to Christian Democratic MP Bernd Schmidbauer, who invited him to the Federal Chancellery. Both were interested in environmental issues, but they soon began to pursue completely different interests.
In December 1991, Schmidbauer became the Federal Governmentʼs Commissioner for Intelligence Services. For his activity in this position, he was nicknamed "Agent 008" (by analogy with James Bond).
Schmidbauer was personally involved in operations. He was present at the release of German hostages in Lebanon, held secret negotiations with Russia about smuggling nuclear materials from the former USSR, and traveled to Iran to return to its government a confiscated missile that the Iranians were planning to use to attack one of the embassies in Germany.
Thus, Hanning approached intelligence for the second time — as Schmidbauerʼs right-hand man, he was responsible for the former Soviet bloc and the Middle East.
In 1998, the Christian Democrats lost the elections, and the government was headed by the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder. On the recommendation of Schmidbauer, the new chancellor proposed August Gunning to head the Federal Intelligence Service of Germany (BND).
Schröder himself became close to Putin in the early 2000s, later supported the construction of “Nord Stream”, and after his resignation went to work in the Russian energy sector.
Gerhard Schröder and August Hanning at the BND headquarters on December 17, 1998, the day Hanning became director of intelligence. He promised to promote transparency in the agency and to reveal some previously classified information.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
2
Gunning headed BND for all seven years of Schröderʼs chancellorship, until 2005.
During this time, he gained a reputation as a reformer and immediately after his appointment called for a "new openness" in the intelligence service. During the Cold War, Germanyʼs foreign intelligence service focused almost entirely on confronting the communist bloc and was a kind of state within a state. Even its headquarters were not in Bonn, the then capital of West Germany, but in the Bavarian town of Pullach, the former estate of Nazi Martin Bormann.
Now BND needed to find a new role. Hanning wanted to turn the service into a "service provider" for the federal government, so in 2003 the intelligence service began moving to Berlin, closer to the countryʼs political leadership.
In this position, Hanning had his first working contacts with Russia. Berlin and Moscow were actively cooperating at the time, in particular at the level of special services. According to media reports, German intelligence was passing on information to the Russians about the international connections of Chechen Islamists.
On March 25, 2000, Hanning and three assistants arrived in the devastated Gudermes, where the Second Russian-Chechen War was ongoing. The next day, presidential elections were held in Russia, in which Vladimir Putin won for the first time.
The most high-profile scandal during Hanningʼs time at the head of BND was related to Iraq. In 2002, the United States prepared for an invasion, claiming that Saddam Husseinʼs regime was developing biological weapons.
These accusations were based in part on the testimony of an Iraqi émigré Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi (a BND informant codenamed “Curveball”). He claimed to have worked as a chemist in mobile laboratories where deadly pathogens were created. In a letter to CIA Director George Tenet, Hanning called this testimony plausible and convincing, although he suggested that it be further verified by UN inspectors.
At the same time, he allowed Americans to publicly refer to the reports prepared by the informant. CIA and the White House took this as carte blanche.
In 2011, al-Janabi admitted in an interview with The Guardian that he had fabricated the story about the labs because he wanted to overthrow Saddam Husseinʼs regime.
The US Secretary of State Colin Powell delivers a speech to the UN Security Council, February 5, 2003. The test tube in his hand symbolized the biological weapons that Iraq was allegedly developing. Powell claimed that such a quantity of the pathogen was enough to shut down Congress in 2001 when anthrax spores were mailed to a senator. Powell based his claim about biological weapons on the testimony of al-Janabi. Ahmed al-Janabi fled Iraq for Germany in 1999. In 2011, eight years after the invasion of Iraq, he admitted to lying to intelligence about Saddam Husseinʼs biological weapons. Al-Janabi said he was proud to be the reason "Iraq was given a sliver of democracy".
Getty Images / «Babel'»
In November 2005, after Angela Merkel came to power, Hanning became State Secretary of the Interior Ministry and resumed his reform efforts. He restructured the police, strengthened the Joint Counter-Terrorism Center, and pushed for greater powers for law enforcement.
After a change in the government coalition in 2009, Hanning left the civil service and entered the private sector, where he achieved considerable success.
3
In July 2010, August Hanning and his wife founded the consulting company “Hanning Consult”.
Hanning turned his many years of experience and connections in the highest echelons of power into a business. The German investigative media Correctiv writes that the company worked, in particular, in Russia, China and Kazakhstan.
In 2018, Hanning founded another consulting company — GSC4. Its website states that the team has good knowledge of the markets of Russia, the CIS countries, Eastern Europe, China and some Arab states. The company also claims to have powerful investigative capabilities and an international network of specialists with contacts in political, business and public circles.
In 2013, Hanning testified at the High Court in London on behalf of Putin-friendly oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska was suing another Russian tycoon Mikhail Chorny over a stake in “Rusal”, then the world’s largest aluminum producer. Deripaska’s lawyers claimed that Chorny had extorted hundreds of millions from him for “coverage”, laundered money, and was generally connected to organized crime.
To prove his opponentʼs criminal connections, Deripaska asked the court to allow twelve witnesses to testify anonymously — to protect them from retaliation. The need for anonymous testimony was justified by Hanningʼs written testimony. He described the methods of Russian criminal groups, how they intimidate witnesses and how difficult it is to protect them.
As an example, he cited one of the cases of money laundering by Russians in Germany. Hanning stated that there was a witness in it who was connected to Chorny, and because of threats he fled to Israel. The court took Hanningʼs testimony into account as an expert opinion.
Under German law, former civil servants must obtain permission to testify in court if the testimony contains official secrets. The German Interior Ministry said it did not know whether such permission had been granted. Whether such permission was necessary would only be determined by officials if they had the full text of the testimony.
However, Deripaska’s British lawyers refused to respond to a request to provide Hanning’s testimony. Hanning replied that he was bound by legal privilege, meaning he could have been not only a witness but also Deripaska’s legal advisor.
Hanning has worked outside of his own firms. In 2014, he joined the British consulting firm G3, initially as a senior advisor and later as head of Russia and other former Soviet republics. He also headed “Pluteous” (a Swiss-based corporate intelligence firm that offers clients exclusive, legally obtained economic intelligence, cybersecurity solutions and geopolitical analysis).
August Hanningʼs page on the “Pluteos” website. His biography states that Hanning first joined intelligence in 1981, when he officially began working at the Federal Chancellery.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
In May 2019, Hanning and the “Pluteous” owner Samuel Danilovich (a German businessman) were among the guests at a meeting in Moscow on European-Russian relations. The event was attended by civil servants, think tanks, and business leaders.
One Russian participant in the meeting called the annexation of Crimea a “necessity” as Ukraine moved closer to NATO. Some Europeans acknowledged that the West had made mistakes, such as stopping lending to Russian small businesses not affiliated with the Kremlin.
At the same time, they stressed that in order to lift sanctions, Russia must take at least small steps toward resolving the war in Ukraine. After the election of Volodymyr Zelensky as president, participants predicted that the conflict would remain frozen at best and escalate at worst.
In the fall of the same year, Hanning was again invited to Russia — this time as an honored guest at a meeting of officials and experts from the Arctic Council countries. It was organized by the Russian Security Council, and the meeting was chaired by its then-Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.
During the cultural program, the participants visited a monastery on the island of Valaam in Lake Ladoga. There, Hanning was photographed next to Patrushev.
In total, the former director of German intelligence visited Russia at least seven times between 2015 and 2019.
Representatives of the Arctic Council countries at the Valaam Monastery on Ladoga Island, 2019. August Hanning stands on the right, next to him is the then Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. In 1999-2008 (when Hanning headed intelligence), Patrushev was the director of FSB, and since 2024 he has become an aide to Putin.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
Another Russian connection of Hanning was the Latvian “PNB Banka”, a controlling stake in which belonged to the Russian-British businessman Grigory Guselnikov. In 2017, Hanning joined the bankʼs supervisory board together with former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
Even then, “PNB Banka” had a dubious reputation — the Latvian regulator fined it for attempts to circumvent sanctions against North Korea.
In 2019, Guselnikov decided to sell the bank to Egyptian-American investor Roger Tamraz and his partners. However, the deal fell — the bank did not receive the promised capital, and some of its assets and documents disappeared. The regulator declared “PNB Banka” bankrupt, and the former management — in particular, Guselnikov — was accused of withdrawing money from its own bank.
A lawsuit was filed against former managers and members of the supervisory board for more than €30 million, and two-thirds of Hanningʼs pension began to be collected in favor of the bankʼs depositors.
The trial in Latvia is still ongoing.
However, the rather close ties with Russia did not prevent Hanning from criticizing Germany for excessive pacifism after 2022. In 2023, together with another former BND director Gerhard Schindler, he wrote an article for Bild with a plan for intelligence reform.
The authors warned that without changes it would turn into a “toothless watchdog in a muzzle and on a chain”, while Germany should prepare for conflicts near its borders. In an interview with The Telegraph in 2024, Hanning called Germany naive and urged it to realize the threat from Russia (which, according to him, is already in a state of conflict with NATO).
Over time, German officials began to avoid Hanning. He developed a reputation for taking on any job if it paid well, even though he himself insisted that he had not broken any laws.
In 2024, the police became interested in Hanning, but for a completely different reason: the former intelligence director was suspected of kidnapping children.
4
Stefan Hansel is a Dane, the ex-husband of the heiress of the German “Block House” restaurant chain Christina Block.
After their divorce, they argued over custody of the two youngest of their four children. The German court sided with the mother, but the Danish court refused to recognize his decision.
Therefore, the children remained with their father in Denmark, and Hansel accused his ex-wife of mistreating them.
On New Yearʼs Eve 2024, Hansel and the children were attacked outside their home. The man was knocked down, and his 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter were tied up, gagged, and taken to Germany.
On January 2, Block took the children away, but a few days later the police returned them to their father.
Stefan Hansel (center) with his lawyers in court against his ex-wife, July 15, 2025. Multimillion-dollar heiress Christina Block says in court that the Israeli "Cyber Cupula Operation" was only supposed to handle the cybersecurity of her business.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
According to the investigation, Block was helped to organize the kidnapping by August Hanning, whom she hired to advise her on security issues. Hanning involved the cyber intelligence company “Cyber Cupula Operations” (headed by former Israeli army intelligence officer David Barkai).
At first, his agents tried to discredit Hansel — they prepared false reports accusing him of pedophilia and planted a flash drive with the relevant materials on it. Block filed a police report against her ex-husband on charges of pedophilia, but law enforcement officers discovered the forgery and opened proceedings against her for false accusations.
After the failure of this attempt, investigators believe that Hanning found the people who kidnapped the children. In 2025, private investigator Werner Mauss named another possible participant in the operation. It was about the former head of the Israeli secret service — the Shabak — Yaakov Peri.
According to him, Peri assembled a group of eight Israeli kidnappers who were paid €7 million, and Hanning assured them that they were only carrying out a decision of a German court.
Block claims that the kidnapping was organized without her knowledge by a security company, and when asked in court whether she knew about Peri or the €7 million, she remained silent. Hanning refused to testify in court and says that he never had contact with Peri, while Peri claims that he learned about the case from the news.
One of the kidnappers has already been arrested. Israeli martial arts instructor Tal Sasson was detained in Cyprus and extradited to Germany, where he was on trial.
In court, Sasson confirmed that he participated in the kidnapping and attacked the childrenʼs father, but denied that he did it for money, saying that he felt like Superman rescuing the children from their evil father. The Jerusalem Post called Sasson a former “Mossad” agent, but this claim could not be confirmed. Other Israelis from the group are being sought.
In September 2025, police searched Hanningʼs home and several offices connected to him in connection with a child abduction case. They also tapped his phone and sent an undercover agent to one of his firms. It was not publicly disclosed whether they found evidence linking Hanning to the kidnapping.
However, during the searches, police seized several boxes of documents, which took months to examine. It turned out that the papers contained a lot of classified material.
5
When August Hanning headed foreign intelligence, his chief of staff was Manfred D.
After Hanning moved to the Ministry of the Interior, Manfred D. became his assistant.
In 2012, he returned to BND and managed to work with three subsequent directors of the service. So Manfred D. had access to the most important intelligence materials for years. According to the investigation, Hanning agreed with his former subordinate that he would sell him secret documents.
By June 2022, Manfred D. had allegedly handed over almost two thousand such materials. These were mostly documents that the BND leadership received before the weekly intelligence meetings in the Federal Chancellery. They concerned, in particular, the Russian army and the Iranian nuclear program, and some of the information was provided to Germany by the intelligence services of allied countries.
August Hanning was arrested on October 6, 2026, in the house where he had lived since childhood.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
Prosecutors claim that Hanning prepared a report for a foreign intelligence officer based on these documents. In addition, he allegedly passed political information to a representative of another intelligence agency for years. Which countries are in question are not officially reported.
According to Der Spiegel, the report could have been intended for Azerbaijani intelligence, but Baku denies this.
At the same time, a number of German media outlets — WDR, NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung — write that this investigation is not related to Russia.
Hanning and Manfred D. are currently in custody. The former BND head is accused of espionage and attempted treason, and his subordinate is accused of aiding and abetting. Hanningʼs defense does not deny that he kept prohibited documents, but insists that he did not transmit anything that could harm Germany.