[Link leads to paywalled article in German.]
- Maximilian Krah, a politician from Germany’s far-right party AfD, told his former assistant Jian G., who is currently in court over alleged espionage, to forward details of AfD party leader Alice Weidel and her life partner’s private life to China. [The two women live in Switzerland with their adopted child.]
- The alleged Chinese spy gleaned also numerous confidential details from the inner workings of the party: about factional struggles and disputes, the private lives of high-ranking AfD officials, the ambitions of co-party leader Tino Chrupalla, and strange business ideas of AfD parliamentarians.
- According to one protocoll, Alice Weidel is "not really so tough and determined" as she appeared in her speeches and on television, and "not popular among the members of the Bundestag [the German parliament]," but had fans both inside and outside the AfD, Jian G.'s files reportedly say
- According to the files discovered at Jian G., Krah told his assistant about an alleged coup plan by Tino Chrupalla: He wanted to get rid of his co-chair Weidel. She should calmly become a candidate for chancellor for the 2025 federal election. If she were to stumble because of "her weakness and lack of leadership qualities," "Tino could use this" – and become the sole AfD leader.
- The investigators are convinced that the order to spy came from the Chinese secret service. Their accusations are based on several explosive documents that can be found in the files of a spectacular espionage case. Krah's long-time employee G., 44, must answer to the Dresden Higher Regional Court. The accusation: intelligence agent activity in a particularly serious case.
- The trial against Jian G. will show to what extent China's secret service was actually successful. It is likely to hold unpleasant surprises for the party. AfD’s Krah is summoned as a witness for September 3.
The English translation from 'Der Spiegel' (original version in German behind a paywall)
The alleged China spy and his secret AfD files
The Word document was written in Chinese and had a poetic file name: "Tea in the Morning." According to investigations by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), it was created on January 7, 2024, at 9:10 PM, by a certain Jian G., who was then an employee of AfD politician Maximilian Krah in the European Parliament.
In the dossier, G., who was born in China, summarized a confidential conversation with his boss. Allegedly, he had met him the day before in a breakfast café on the outskirts of the Czech capital, Prague. According to the document, Krah told his assistant G. in detail about internal party matters and gossiped about AfD leader Alice Weidel. Krah is also said to have shared details from the private life of Weidel and her partner – meticulously documented by the author of the dossier.
The investigators are convinced that the order to spy came from the Chinese secret service. The protocol of the morning tea hour is one of several explosive documents that can be found in the files of a spectacular espionage case.
Krah's long-time employee G., 44, must answer to the Dresden Higher Regional Court. The accusation: intelligence agent activity in a particularly serious case. His defense lawyers left inquiries unanswered.
Jian G., according to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, is said to have supplied Beijing with information from the European Parliament, among other things. He is said to have obtained more than 500, some sensitive, documents for this purpose. According to the investigators, G. also spied on Chinese dissidents in Germany and gathered "information about leading AfD politicians."
The trial could be embarrassing for Krah, who is now in the Bundestag, and the AfD. According to SPIEGEL research, the alleged Chinese spy gleaned numerous confidential details from the inner workings of the party: about factional struggles and disputes, the private lives of high-ranking AfD officials, the ambitions of co-party leader Tino Chrupalla, and strange business ideas of AfD parliamentarians.
For example, BKA investigators secured another explosive file from Jian G. entitled "Project Artificial Diamonds." The document – also written in Chinese – is about a joint lunch between G. and AfD member of parliament Jan Wenzel Schmidt. He was also the party's general secretary in Saxony-Anhalt at the time and an influential networker on Chrupalla's side.
On January 4, 2024, according to the dossier, the two met in the city center of Magdeburg in a Spanish restaurant. Initially, it was about the trade in synthetic gemstones, in which Schmidt was allegedly interested. Jian G. initiated the cooperation with two Chinese companies for the AfD politician; prices and procedures were already largely set. For testing purposes, he handed the MP an artificial diamond in the restaurant.
Then things got political. According to the protocol, Schmidt spoke about AfD leader Weidel. She was "not really so tough and determined" as she appeared in her speeches and on television. Weidel was "not popular among the members of the Bundestag," but had fans both inside and outside the AfD – so the dual leadership of the party would probably remain for the foreseeable future.
According to the protocol, AfD politician Schmidt also couldn't resist gossiping. Accordingly, he mused about Weidel's alleged love life in her youth.
When asked, Schmidt does not deny the meeting with G. in Magdeburg, but denies that the conversation went that way. According to his version, Jian G. asked him what the chances were for Krah to become AfD leader alongside Weidel. To which he, Schmidt, replied that the current dual leadership was "unchallenged." All other information from the alleged China spy was "made up," and he was also "neither presented with a real nor an artificial diamond." Krah's employee had only offered him a funded trip to China; he had declined it.
Jian G., on the other hand, according to his dossier, is said to have learned something else during lunch. The news apparently caused him unrest. Accordingly, his boss Krah had recently been questioned by the American Federal Police FBI during a trip to the USA. (...) Two days after the Schmidt conversation, G. is said to have met Krah on the outskirts of Prague for breakfast. According to the protocol he created of the alleged meeting, one question preoccupied him: whether the FBI had also questioned Krah about his China connections. The AfD politician "clearly and emphatically denied" this. (...)
In the meantime, the Dresden Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating the question of whether Krah was bribed for his pro-China course. During the investigations against Jian G., the investigators came across suspicious payments. From April 2019 to December 2022, more than 50,000 euros are said to have flowed to law firms for which Krah worked. The money came from companies in Jian G.'s environment. Krah, it says in investigation files, was supplied with money by his employee. There were efforts to conceal payments with the help of bogus invoices.
Krah denies this. He did not receive any bribes and did nothing illegal otherwise. It was a "completely normal legal activity": "All invoices were open, the money was taxed. Nothing was hidden at any time." In connection with Jian G., he only blames himself for "not having paid closer attention."
So far, Krah's China entanglements have had hardly any consequences within the party. This could change with the new details from the espionage investigations.
According to the dossiers discovered at Jian G.'s, Krah told his assistant about an alleged coup plan by Tino Chrupalla: He wanted to get rid of his co-chair Weidel. She should calmly become a candidate for chancellor for the 2025 federal election. If she were to stumble because of "her weakness and lack of leadership qualities," "Tino could use this" – and become the sole AfD leader.
That's what Jian G. noted after the alleged conversation with Krah. In recent months, he has actually served the network that supports Chrupalla and is obviously working against Weidel. When asked, Chrupalla denies ever having made such a statement. It is a "false story" from documents he does not know. Apparently, the dual leadership of the AfD is to be torpedoed "on behalf of a foreign power."
In addition to AfD intrigues, Krah is also said to have revealed intimate details from Weidel's life, according to the BKA investigations.
Accordingly, he is said to have told his assistant from whom the semen allegedly came with which one of the children of the AfD leader and her partner was conceived. G. also recorded this in the dossier. (...)
Krah denies on request that he ever exchanged internal party matters with his employee, "especially not about the private life of Ms. Weidel." Jian G. probably "wrote down some rumors and old findings he had picked up somewhere and then assigned them to me." He considers the dossier to be "showing off," and the descriptions have "little to do with reality." He also cannot remember meeting Jian G. in Prague in early 2024, says Krah. His calendar does not contain an appointment in the Czech capital for the day of the alleged conversation, but only an AfD event in Franconia in the afternoon. He had come to it from Vienna. Maybe he had talked on the phone with G. during the car ride, but he couldn't remember.
Weidel had a spokesperson announce that she had not yet been informed by the authorities about the content of the documents seized from G. She is therefore unable to comment on it at this time.
According to the investigations, the alleged agent not only tapped the AfD members of parliament Schmidt and Krah, but also Krah's then-office manager in the European Parliament, Jörg Sobolewski. Among the documents secured is a protocol of a conversation between G. and him, created on December 2, 2023.
According to the dossier, Sobolewski sensed a conspiracy. The US intelligence agency CIA has been trying for years to infiltrate the AfD and other right-wing parties in Europe – so that they would position themselves against China and Russia. Accordingly, the CIA "bought" several AfD officials, including a former party leader. Sobolewski remained indebted to the document for evidence of this adventurous thesis. When asked, he said he could "not remember every single conversation" with his then-office colleague Jian G. But it did not seem particularly logical to him that he had information about US intelligence agencies, said Sobolewski. He "did not assume" that G. "fabricated adventure stories in Chinese and passed them on to third parties."
Apparently, however, the AfD was not infiltrated by American agents, but by a spy from Beijing. The trial against Jian G. will show to what extent China's secret service was actually successful. It is likely to hold unpleasant surprises for the party. AfD man Krah is summoned as a witness for September 3.
