According to a media report, the office of the AfD politician Maximilian Krah in the EU Parliament’s trade committee has been active in recent years accessed secret documents on the EU’s foreign trade several times. This was the result of an internal investigation by the committee administration into the use of the committee’s so-called sharepoints. This gives MPs access to documents from the confederation. This is reported by “Spiegel”. These included, for example: Analyzes of the foreign trade strategies of partner states or documents on the course of trade negotiations.
The analysis does not reveal whether Krah personally or his assistants accessed the documents, the magazine reports. According to “Spiegel”, the AfD politician did not respond to a query as to whether Jian G., who is suspected of espionage, had access to Sharepoint as an employee. As several MPs report, However, access for employees is common practice in parliament. Krah told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” that he had checked whether Jian G. had access to documents classified as secret. The result is negative.
According to “Spiegel”, the EU Parliament is trying to resolve the case internally, as it is only sparsely informed by the secret services of the nation states. The background is not only the alleged Chinese spy in the AfD, but also possible payments from Russia to several EU MPs in connection with the news site “Voice of Europe”.
On the Thursday before last, Parliament President Roberta Metsola informed the group leaders about discussions with representatives of the Czech, Polish and Belgian authorities regarding their intelligence information. This shows, writes the magazine, citing an internal briefing document, that the Belgian security authorities are convinced that they have sufficient evidence that foreign governments have paid money to EU parliamentarians. (lam)