2024-05-06 20:45:37
Maximilian Krah has asked his colleague who was arrested for spying for China to leave the party. Otherwise, “a party expulsion process would be unavoidable,” he said.
The AfD‘s top candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah, has asked his employee who was arrested for suspected spying for China to leave the party. Jian G. must “immediately” leave the AfD “to prevent further damage,” demanded Krah in the newspaper “Welt” (Friday edition). “If he doesn’t do that, a party expulsion process is inevitable.”
Jian G. has been a close colleague of AfD MEP Krah since 2019. He was arrested in Dresden on April 22nd on suspicion of acting as an agent for a foreign secret service in a particularly serious case. The Federal Prosecutor General specifically accuses him of passing on information about negotiations in the EU Parliament to China and spying on Chinese opposition members in Germany.
According to the “Welt” report, G. also became an AfD party member in 2022. Krah fired the long-time employee after his arrest over espionage allegations.
“Maybe I was naive”
Krah again denied knowing about the man’s possible illegal activities. “I knew of contacts with the Taiwanese representation, the Chinese embassy and the Chinese opposition,” Krah told the newspaper. “But not to the extent we now know, so I didn’t notice a contradiction.”
The AfD top politician instead criticized the German constitutional protection authorities. “According to media reports, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had been systematically monitoring Jian G. since 2020,” he said. “Maybe I was naïve, but they knew.”
A month before the European elections, Krah is under pressure not only because of the espionage affair involving his employee. Last week, the Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated preliminary investigations into “alleged” money payments from Russian and Chinese sources against Krah. According to the investigators, this will check “whether there is any initial suspicion of criminal behavior involving bribery of members of parliament”.