August Hanning, the chief of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1998 to 2005, was recently arrested on suspicion of having committed espionage and treason. The first stories mentioned no connection to the People’s Republic of China. A major focus was Russia.
On October 6, The Telegraph reported that the 80-year-old Hanning (shown above) was “suspected of spending 16 years illegally collecting classified documents and selling some of the information to an undisclosed foreign power.”
A former chief of staff for Hanning referred to as “Manfred D,” also the chief of staff of three later BND bosses, was also arrested. According to German prosecutors, Mr. D had been providing “valuable intelligence from the Federal Intelligence Service to Hanning in exchange for remuneration.” Hanning also prepared an analysis, possibly never delivered, for an unnamed “foreign intelligence service,” later identified by Der Spiegel as that of Azerbaijan.
The Telegraph article noted Hanning’s continued “close relations with various Russian businessmen and organisations since his time as a diplomat in East Berlin in the late 1980s.”
Enter Wang Jianzheng
The plot thickened a few days later, when Reuters was reporting that Der Spiegel was reporting that Hanning also had longstanding contacts with “a former senior Chinese general” (October 9, 2026).
The magazine said Hanning, who left Germany’s foreign intelligence service in 2005, had travelled to China several times, where he knew a former official who had served in China’s embassy in formerly communist East Germany.
It said the former major general, whom it identified as Wang Jianzheng, was an established expert in German-related issues and had translated a number of German books into Chinese….
Prosecutors have not commented on what material they believe may have been shared or who it may have been shared with.
So whether Hanning has done any spying for China is not yet known.
One thing known for sure is that when police raided Hanning’s home in 2025 in connection with an unrelated case, “police found 2,000 highly sensitive security documents which at that time he had no right to possess, having left the agency two decades prior. Among the cache were reports on the BND’s senior leadership and briefing materials for the weekly intelligence meeting at the German chancellery.”
Hanning’s lawyer says, yes, Hanning possessed the secret documents, but he never paid for them and he never shared them with foreign powers.
Also see:
Financial Times: “The fall of Germany’s ex-spymaster”
Background on Hanning.
