August Hanning served as president of Federal Intelligence Service from 1998 to 2005
  • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 days ago

    spying on behalf of an overseas intelligence agency

    Overseas? That’s not a normal term in mainland Europe unless it’s the Americas.
    They are very close to insinuating that the spying was on behalf of USA.

    I think what they mean is simply “foreign” and not “overseas”.
    As the article gives no other indication that I can spot on who he was allegedly spying for.

  • WorldVerdict@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    Arresting a former intelligence chief is a big deal for any country. Curious whether this turns out to be a long-running operation or something recent. Will be watching how much detail the prosecutors release.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      We had a case here in Denmark, where the chief of military intelligence was accused of revealing secrets, although they were publicly known because they were part of what Snowden had revealed.

      That whole case reeked of political abuse of power, because he didn’t just do whatever he was told.
      They even tapped his phone and he was also accused of having told his wife when he expected to go on holiday or something of that sort.

      Absolutely insane government overreach. And of course the whole thing ended with the accusations dropped, but at that point he had been replaced.
      When Denmark is stated as the least corrupt country in the world that may be true regarding economic corruption.
      But we absolutely have corruption.

      However this story seems a lot more legit.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    August Hanning was president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from December 1998 to November 2005.

    The prosecutor’s office said Manfred D had worked as Hanning’s chief of staff. After Hanning’s tenure at the BND, he became chief of staff for several subsequent presidents of the BND from March 2012 until March 2026.

    Both suspects are believed by prosecutors to have agreed, in the spring of 2010, to Manfred D continuously transmitting valuable intelligence from the BND to Hanning “in exchange for remuneration”.

    So…Hanning or Manfred D was either the top German foreign intelligence guy or chief of staff for the top German foreign intelligence guy for 21 of the last 28 years.

    whistles

    Yeah, that sounds like a big deal.

    EDIT: His German-language Wikipedia article has more on him than English-language. Going off that, he had his fingers in a lot of stuff. Using Google Translate to English, some highlights:

    • 1986–1990: security officer in West German embassy to East Germany.
    • 1996: Coordinator of federal intelligence services
    • 2005–2009: State Secretary of the Interior
    • Head of British consulting firm “G3 in Russia”
    • Member of board of German-Azerbaijani Forum
    • Member of supervisory board of Latvian PNB Banka since 2017, where apparently he had some dispute over which they were claiming millions in damages