Azerbaijan on Wednesday denied a report that former German intelligence chief August Hanning, accused of buying secret documents and using them in an analysis for a foreign spy service, had been in contact with an agent from Azerbaijan, Reuters reports.
The country's Media and Broadcasting Council said in a statement that allegations of an Azerbaijani connection to the case, first reported by Der Spiegel, were unfounded.
"The malicious intent of the forces behind this disinformation operation is to damage Azerbaijan-Germany relations," the council said.
Hanning, the former head of the BND foreign intelligence service, was detained on Tuesday on suspicion of attempted treason and espionage in one of Germany's biggest security scandals since the Cold War.
Prosecutors said he paid to receive classified documents from a BND office manager and used them to prepare an analysis for an officer of an unnamed foreign intelligence service.
Germany's federal prosecutor's office declined to comment on the Spiegel report. Hanning did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
