The Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office has begun investigations against AfD member of the Bundestag Petr Bystron due to initial suspicion of bribery and money laundering. Officials from the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office have been searching the AfD politician’s office in the Bundestag as well as other properties in Germany and Mallorca since the morning. That’s what she found out Southgerman newspaper from security circles. The MP’s immunity had previously been lifted by a resolution of the Bundestag. Parliament’s immunity committee initially recommended this step. Because of the special importance of the case, the entire plenary session then had to vote in the morning and voted in favor of the motion. Only the AfD abstained.
The Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office only officially announced that it had initiated investigations into initial suspicion of bribery and money laundering against an AfD MP. According to SZ information, this is supposed to be Bystron. The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office was commissioned to investigate the case, the public prosecutor’s office said. As part of this procedure, objects in Berlin and Bavaria as well as on Mallorca were searched on Thursday and evidence was seized, which would subsequently be evaluated.
Eleven public prosecutors and around 70 police officers were involved in the searches. “According to current knowledge, no special incidents occurred.” Documents and data carriers were seized “which will subsequently be evaluated with regard to incriminating or exculpatory evidence.” According to investigators, “third parties” who were not accused were also searched.
With the raid, the affair expands to include possible influence on AfD politicians. Bystron has been in the headlines for weeks because of possible connections to the pro-Russian propaganda network “Voice of Europe”. The Czech secret service BIS is said to have audio recordings in which Bystron can allegedly be heard counting money. There should also be videos of Bystron accepting small packages. The audio recordings were played to Czech parliamentarians. The 51-year-old rejected the allegations several times. Bystron could not initially be reached for comment on Thursday.
A difficult situation has arisen for the investigators in Germany. Security circles say that the German authorities have not yet received the original recordings from their Czech colleagues. The Czechs are said to have only informed the Germans with a kind of summary of their findings, which is generally not unusual, even between friendly secret services. However, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is apparently not even allowed to pass on its summary to the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office; the Czech BIS has not granted approval for this – this is also a custom among secret services: whoever received it remains the master of information.
Greens: “Proximity to Russia and China is not an isolated case for the AfD”
At the end of March, the Czech Republic placed “Voice of Europe” on the national sanctions list following intelligence investigations. The website is part of a Russian influence operation whose aim is to question Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and freedom. Interviews with Bundestag member Bystron and MEP Krah appeared on the portal, among others.
According to information from Belgian secret services, networks controlled by Russia are trying to help pro-Russian candidates succeed in the upcoming European elections. Bystron is in second place on the AfD list for the European elections.
The first reactions from the Bundestag were sharp. “The proximity to Russia and China is not an isolated case for the AfD, it has a system,” said the parliamentary director of the Greens, Irene Mihalic. “The AfD must never succeed in bringing sabotage and destabilization attempts by foreign states into European or German parliaments.”