Arrest of an employee
China espionage – now Maximilian Krah himself is also coming into focus
AfD politician Krah: In the service of China?
© Sebastian Kahnert / DPA
Accusation of Chinese espionage: The arrest of an employee comes at an inopportune time for the AfD and its leading European candidate Maximilian Krah. Are there more forces in the party working for enemy states than previously assumed?
Tuesday morning, a quick call to Maximilian Krah. The AfD politician doesn’t really want to say anything on the phone. Just this much: he was surprised by the news. There will be an official statement later.
There are reasons why the AfD’s top candidate for the European elections is so taciturn. One of his employees, Jian G., was arrested that night. The suspicion: espionage for China.
The Federal Prosecutor General in Karlsruhe accuses the man of being an agent for a foreign secret service in a particularly serious case. “Jian G. is an employee of a Chinese secret service,” says the press release. In January 2024, the accused “repeatedly passed on information about negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament to his intelligence client.” In addition, Chinese opposition members in Germany were spied on through him.
And this sentence can also be found in the message: “He has been working for a German member of the European Parliament since 2019.” Krah’s name isn’t mentioned, but he doesn’t have to be. Everyone knows who Jian G. worked for anyway.
The arrest of the close associate comes at a particularly inopportune time for Krah and his party. Finally, the AfD wants to officially open its European election campaign on Saturday in Donaueschingen, together with party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla. Recently, the extreme right seemed to have halfway stopped the decline in its poll numbers. Now the next unpleasant debate follows. Are there more forces in the party working for enemy states than previously assumed?
The Bystron affair is also unpleasant for Krah
Krah has been in the spotlight since the Petr Bystron affair. Bystron, AfD member of the Bundestag and candidate number two on the EU party list, is said to have received 20,000 euros from Russia, according to Czech intelligence information. Apparently there is an audio recording that at least suggests that the money was handed over in cash. There are also unanswered questions about Krah.
The payments are said to have been processed via the pro-Russian web portal “Voice of Europe” – for which Krah and Bystron gave interviews. Like Bystron, Krah also denies ever receiving any payments from Russia.
The problem: Even the American FBI has Krah in its sights because of his contacts in Russia. During a visit to the USA, the MEP was questioned several times about whether he had received financial payments from a pro-Russian activist. The basis for the suspicion was a text message to Krah in which there was talk of reactivated compensation. The MEP said he had not replied to the message. He doesn’t even know why he got it.
The proximity to Russia is a problem for Krah, his proximity to China has long been problematic and is now becoming even more explosive due to the arrest of his employee. Krah’s interests and trips to the People’s Republic were reported on as early as the summer of 2023. At the center at the time: his employee Jian G. The AfD man denied the accusation that Chinese money was flowing into his immediate environment. He recently repeated his denial in an interview with star. The arrest is also likely to be unpleasant for Krah himself; the question now is what exactly he knew about his employee.
One thing is clear: Jian G. belongs to Krah’s closest circle. He worked next door to the politician in Brussels. But the arrest apparently did not take place in the EU capital, but in Dresden. G. has family there – just like his employer Krah.
AfD leaders are distancing themselves
Krah is not without controversy in the party and the parliamentary group. For many, his statements are too radical; some are bothered by the Saxon’s proximity to China and Russia. For his critics, this case will be an opportunity to make the criticism, which has so far been muted, become louder. After star-Information Krah is said to have also tried to have a direct influence on his party’s China policy in the Bundestag parliamentary group.
The party leadership is now noticeably distancing itself from Krah. When the AfD chairman Chrupalla was confronted by Caren Miosga on Sunday evening on ARD with misogynistic statements in a recently published book by his EU top candidate, he reacted harshly: such theses are of course “nonsense”.
Late in the morning, Krah finally sent out his official reaction to his employee’s case. “I found out about the arrest of my colleague Jian Guo from the press this morning. I don’t have any further information,” said the AfD man. “Spying for a foreign state is a serious accusation. If the allegations prove to be true, this would result in the immediate termination of employment.”