Germany arrests far-right EU lawmaker’s aide on suspicions of spying for China
- German authorities accuse assistant to Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s top candidate in European elections, of working for Chinese spy service
- The news comes just a day after Germany detains three people suspected of passing hi-tech secrets to Chinese state security ministry
Krah identified the employee in question as a man named Jian Guo in a post on X on Tuesday.
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A statement released by Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office on Tuesday said the suspect “is an employee of a Chinese secret service. Since 2019, he has been working for a German member of the European Parliament”.
“He also spied on Chinese opposition figures in Germany for the intelligence service,” it continued, adding that he would appear before the Federal Court of Justice later in the day.
Krah said he learned about his assistant’s arrest in the media on Tuesday, but had no further information.
In a statement, the AfD described the arrest of “one of Mr Krah’s employees on suspicion of espionage” as “very worrying”.
“The party will do everything possible to support the clarification,” read the statement.
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At a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, the Chinese foreign ministry said the accusations were “hype”.
“We are aware of the reports and related hype,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
“The intention of this kind of hype is very obvious … it is to smear and suppress China and to destroy the atmosphere of cooperation between China and Europe,” he added.
Krah has become a controversial figure in the European Parliament for his pro-China remarks and his regular appearances in Chinese state media. He has also built an enormous presence on the Chinese-owned short video platform TikTok.
In 2022 Krah told the Global Times, a nationalist paper affiliated with People’s Daily, that “decoupling from China would serve only the interests of America and damage our own industry severely. This is not about democracy or human rights, it is about the future conflict between Washington and Beijing.”
Earlier in the year, he told Guancha, a platform popular with Chinese nationalists, that the country should not “seek reconciliation” with the West on the issue of human rights.
“There are so many outstanding scholars in China, and I know you are studying the theories of the great German jurist Carl Schmitt. It seems to me that studying his views will lead you to the right conclusions,” Krah told Guancha, referring to the prominent Nazi political theorist.
Last year, media reports swirled about his links to Chinese intelligence organs through his assistant, who was hired when Krah was elected to the European Parliament in 2019 and accompanied him on a trip to China that year.
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The federal prosecutor’s statement said that the suspect, whom it identified only as “Jian G.”, was a German citizen. A report from ZEIT, a German newspaper, said that he obtained citizenship after entering the country as a student then becoming a businessman.
The European Parliament said it had suspended him with immediate effect and would “work with the relevant authorities and follow up accordingly”.
According to the ZEIT report, Krah represented the suspect as a lawyer more than a decade ago, when his client was then a member of the Social Democratic Party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Founded in 2013 in opposition to EU bailouts of the likes of Greece and Portugal, the AfD’s popularity has been bolstered through hardline anti-immigrant and anti-green positions at a time when Germany is languishing in a recession and struggling to tamp down persistent inflation.
As its popularity soars, the party’s murky ties with fringe elements have brought accusations of homophobia, racism and even neo-Nazism. The AfD has been widely accused of echoing Russian propaganda throughout the war in Ukraine.
Last June, in a historic first, the AfD sent a high-ranking delegation to Beijing and Shanghai for a week-long visit. Leading the delegation was Alice Weidel, the AfD co-chair, who is a fluent Mandarin speaker and lived in China for six years.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that Krah would have to “bear responsibility” for the scandal.
“If it is confirmed that the European Parliament was used to spy for Chinese intelligence services, then this is an attack on European democracy from within. Anyone who employs such an employee bears responsibility for this,” she wrote on X.
Also on Monday, two British men were charged under the official secrets act with spying for Chinese intelligence in a case centred on parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash.
