The xenophobic and eurosceptic formation is under investigation for illegal financing
The Berlin prosecutor’s office and police officers on Wednesday registered the headquarters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), as announced by the parliamentary faction in the Bundestag of the party with xenophobic and anti-European leanings. The prosecutor’s office in the German capital emphasized that there were simultaneous searches in six other buildings in Berlin, as well as in the states of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia. The public charge explained that the operation is pursuing crimes that affect the party finance law, as well as possible misappropriation of funds. The prosecutors stressed in a statement that the investigation has implications for former party chairman Jörg Meuthen and former treasurer of the formation Klaus-Günther Fohrmann.
The researchers apparently intend to use the data to find clues to possible secret agreements between the AfD and its anonymous electoral financiers that sent them money through the obscure and now disbanded Association for the Preservation of the Rule of Law and Citizen Liberties and the Swiss business of public relations Doel AG. Until now, the party claimed to be unaware of the origin of the millionaire aid they received in various election campaigns. A confirmation that falters after media outlets such as ‘Spiegel Online’, ‘Correctiv’ and ‘Frontal 21’ revealed that the campaigns funded by their anonymous donors were billed with the same customer number as the Alternative’s itself for Germany.
The prosecutor’s office of the German capital emphasized that numerous documents were seized in the registers, but also computers and databases. Specifically, the party accounts for the years 2016 and 2018 are examined, as well as the financing of the election campaign for the federal elections of 2017, the years in which Meuthen was chairman of the AfD. As early as June 2021, the prosecutor’s office of the German capital requested the waiver of Jörg Meuthen’s immunity as a member of the European Parliament, a request that the Chamber of Strasbourg approved last February. Shortly before, at the end of January, the interested party had resigned as one of the two presidents of the ultra-nationalist party, having lost the internal power struggle as a moderate party in the since-dominated Alternative for Germany. by the most radical wing, in which various neo-Nazi ideologues appear.
The two current Chairmen of Alternative for Germany, Alice Weidel and Timo Chrupalla, criticized the searches ordered by the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office for being carried out without notice, which is normal in this type of action. Weidel called them “an extremely disproportionate and intimidating measure” and Chrupalla denounced that “entire hard drives, mailboxes and computer files are copied”. The party co-chair assured that “if the prosecutor’s office had consulted us beforehand, we would have responded and made the documentation available to them.”
Source: La Verdad
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