Has a custody dispute involving the multi-millionaire heiress of a steak chain brought down the former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service (BND)?
Yesterday August Hanning, who ran the BND from1998 to 2005, was arrested after a search of his home found documents that prosecutors say suggest he had illegally acquired BND intelligence after leaving office and used it to further his private consultancy work.
It is alleged that in 2010, several years after leaving the BND, Hanning reached out to his former aide, named only as Manfred D. due to German privacy laws. Manfred had been his chief of staff and remained in that role for subsequent BND heads until March 2026.
In return for alleged payments from Hanning, Manfred is accused of passing over up to 2,000 documents, many of which were classified or intended purely for internal BND use. Some of the documents were prepared for the Chancellery, the highest level of the German government.
For all that Germans are said to be humorless, there is a certain dark comedy to the allegations
Other documents came from foreign partner services, raising fears that British or American intelligence, some of which could identify agents or intelligence officers, might have been among the leaked material. The partner services are said to have been notified before Hanning’s arrest.
This allegedly went on until summer 2022. Among the documents thought to have been passed on are those relating to the Iranian nuclear program and Russian military strength.
In at least one case Hanning is thought to have prepared a briefing for a representative of a foreign intelligence service. He is also said to have been in repeated contact with another foreign intelligence service and to have passed on political information based on the secret documents.
The foreign powers involved have not so far been named, although China and Russia have been ruled out. That has surprised some, as there have been repeated scandals involving those two nations and Germany. In the case of Carsten L., a senior technical reconnaissance officer in the BND was arrested in 2022 on suspicion of passing secrets to the Russian FSB via a diamond trader in return for hundreds of thousands of Euros. (Carsten L denies the allegations in an ongoing court case.)
Der Spiegel has reported allegations that one of the foreign intelligence services involved in the Hanning case was Azerbaijani, although German prosecutors have not confirmed that.
There has also been speculation, although so far it remains only that, identifying the other foreign intelligence service as Israeli. One reason for that is because of Hanning’s other alleged links to former Israeli spies. His house was originally searched, not because he was suspected of illegally procuring BND intelligence, but because of his involvement in the high-profile Christina Block case.
Block is currently on trial in Hamburg, alleged to have hired professionals to kidnap her own children as part of a custody dispute. She is the heiress to the Block House steakhouse chain, founded by her father Eugen. You can find their branded steaks sold in every Edeka, the German equivalent to Waitrose.
She was married to Stephan Hensel from 2005 to 2018, and the couple have four children together. After their divorce, she was granted custody of the two youngest children but in late 2021 Hensel refused to return them after they came to visit him in Denmark. The Danish courts refused to enforce their return, with Hensel later winning custody of the children in Denmark.
Allegedly, Block hired an Israeli security firm led by a former Shin Bet officer who, on New Year’s Eve 2023, ambushed Hensel and the children while they were watching the fireworks. The masked men hit and restrained Hensel, while the children were forcibly taken and driven across the border into Germany, where their mother collected them.
The German courts have now ordered the children be returned to their father and Block faces up to ten years in prison on charges of child abduction, grievous bodily harm and unlawful detention. She denies the charges, arguing that the Israeli security firm was hired for legitimate cybersecurity work and that she did not order or know about the abductions in advance.
This is where Hanning re-enters the story. He is said to have organized the Israeli abduction effort. Hensel has further alleged that Hanning recruited Danny Yatom, former head of the Mossad in the 1990s as part of the plot. He has admitted knowing Hanning but denied any involvement in the abduction.
It was the investigation into the Block case that led to Hanning’s home being searched, revealing the alleged illegal access of BND documents. There are still many details in this story awaiting confirmation, while questions will be raised about how much the German authorities knew about Hanning’s activities after leaving the BND. Yet for all that Germans are said to be humorless, there is a certain dark comedy to Germany’s former top spook being brought down by a bitter custody dispute involving a steak chain.
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