Authority has been silent so far
Raid on the AfD: prosecutors search party headquarters
AfD doormats in the federal office of the party (archive image)
© Picture Alliance / DPA
There has apparently been a raid on the AfD party headquarters in Berlin. The public prosecutor’s office has not yet released any details.
According to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Berlin public prosecutor’s office searched the party’s federal office on Wednesday. It should therefore go to an investigation against the former party leader Jörg Meuthen. His immunity as a member of the European Parliament had already been lifted in February.
According to matching information from “Spiegel” and ZDF, the search is related to possibly illegal party financing in the years 2016 to 2018. The Hamburg news magazine also reported that a total of seven properties in four federal states were searched in the course of the investigation this Wednesday.
AfD leadership criticizes the raid by the Berlin public prosecutor’s office
According to AfD co-head Tino Chrupalla, the authorities copied “entire hard drives, mailboxes and file folders”. He complained that the public prosecutor’s office had not asked in advance for the release of the data.
A spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor wanted the raid on star-Do not confirm the request at first. However, he announced further information for the course of the day.
In a statement, the AfD leadership sharply criticized the investigators’ approach. Chrupalla’s co-party leader Alice Weidel called the search an “extremely unusual and extremely disproportionate measure to intimidate the AfD as the most important opposition party”.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated and supplemented several times since it was first published.
Sources: public prosecutor Berlin, Alternative for Germany, “Mirror”, ZDFnews agencies DPA and AFP