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