Spionageverdacht Krah AFD

Suspicion of espionage — search of AfD politician Krah in Brussels

Due to a number of cases in the past, it is incre­asingly suspected that some AfD poli­ti­cians have conspi­cuous links to Russia and China.

This suspi­cion now appears to have been confirmed with regard to an employee (Jian G.) of AfD MEP Krah. He was arrested last month on suspi­cion of spying for China and his home in Dresden was sear­ched. Subse­quently, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office had the offices of the former top candi­date Krah in the Euro­pean Parlia­ment sear­ched.

Krah had hired the employee in ques­tion, who had come to Germany from China in 2022, as an assistant after he entered the Euro­pean Parlia­ment for the AfD in 2019. After the alle­ga­tions of espio­nage against his employee became known, he announced that he wanted to dismiss him.

The employee of the AfD MEP is alleged to have spied on Chinese dissi­dents in Germany and to have passed on infor­ma­tion from the Euro­pean Parlia­ment to a Chinese secret service. He is also alleged to have offered himself as a contact for the Office for the Protec­tion of the Consti­tu­tion and the Federal Intel­li­gence Service.

The specific suspected offence: acting as an agent for a foreign secret service in a parti­cu­larly serious case pursuant to § 99 Abs. 1 Nr. 1, Abs. 2 StGB.

§ 99 Abs. 1 StGB of the German Criminal Code, anyone who carries out intel­li­gence acti­vi­ties for the secret service of a foreign power with the aim of commu­ni­ca­ting or supp­lying facts, objects or know­ledge or who declares their willing­ness to carry out such acti­vi­ties is liable to a custo­dial sentence of up to five years or a mone­tary penalty.

§ Section 99 para. 2 of the German Criminal Code also lists two parti­cu­larly serious cases, which are punis­hable by a prison sentence of between one and ten years. Among other things, a parti­cu­larly serious case exists if, as alle­gedly in the case of Maxi­mi­lian Krah’s employee, the offender provides facts that are kept secret by an offi­cial body and abuses a posi­tion of respon­si­bi­lity that places him under a special obli­ga­tion to keep such secrets.

A Bundes­wehr officer close to the AfD also faced a similar accu­sa­tion and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by the Düssel­dorf Higher Regional Court at the end of May. The officer had worked at the Bundes­wehr Procu­re­ment Office in Koblenz and had obtained sensi­tive infor­ma­tion from there, all of which (1,400 pages of mate­rial) was clas­si­fied. He subse­quently offered these docu­ments to both the Russian consu­late in Bonn and the Russian embassy in Berlin.

The soldier was arrested on 9 August 2023 and was remanded in custody until the main trial. In this case, too, the charges included Section 99 (1) StGB.

In addi­tion, accor­ding to the judge­ment of the Düssel­dorf Higher Regional Court, the accused German army officer was liable to prose­cu­tion under Section 353b StGB for betraying offi­cial secrets.

Accor­ding to the convicted man, an acute fear of a nuclear escala­tion of the Ukraine war and joining the AfD at the time were the motives for the offence.

What moti­vated Maxi­mi­lian Krah’s employee to spy for the Chinese govern­ment is still unclear and will probably only become an issue during the main trial.

If you have any further ques­tions or are a defen­dant in criminal procee­dings or tax procee­dings (criminal tax procee­dings), please do not hesi­tate to contact us.

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