East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, who oversaw some of the Cold War's biggest swaps of captured spies in Berlin, has died at 82, his family says.

Vogel died on Thursday at his home in Schliersee, Bavaria, after recently suffering a heart attack.

His swaps included KGB agent Rudolf Abel for US pilot Gary Powers, shot down over the USSR, in 1962.

He also oversaw the transfer of nearly a quarter of a million people from East to West Germany for billions of marks.