BERLIN – Germany’s BND intelligence agency knew as early as 1952 that Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi leader who orchestrated the Holocaust, was hiding in Buenos Aires, a media report said Saturday.

The report in Germany’s Bild newspaper comes after the U.S. in 2006 released files showing the CIA told the BND in 1958 Eichmann “is reported to have lived in Argentina” since 1952.

Bild said it obtained a BND file from 1952 that indicates the agency believed he was in Argentina. The BND did not return calls seeking comment.

The BND has 4,500 pages of classified files on Eichmann. The agency says the files need to remain secret, but a freelance reporter last year sued to have them released. They are now being reviewed in secret by three judges at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig.

Israeli agents abducted Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960 and brought him to Jerusalem for trial. Eichmann, who was the head of the Gestapo’s Jewish affairs office during the World War II, was found guilty of war crimes, sentenced to death and hanged in 1962.

According to court files, the BND said that releasing the documents would jeopardize the work of an informant.