Description: Germany’s public prosecutors announced their intention to strip the immunity of a member of the far – right political party Alternative for Germany, over money laundering allegations related to China. Prosecutors from Dresden uncovered investigation results which confirmed their suspicions, that a suspected individual by the name of Maximilian Krah, who entered the AfD with the latest election in Feb, received payments related to Chinese companies. The probe, most probably focused on Krah, comes two years after his assistant was discovered to have gathered information in the European Parliament on behalf of the Chinese intelligence service and gathered information on Chinese dissidents, as well as having access to highly classified documents in the European Parliament. The accusations emerge as the German internal security service, the BfV, moved towards labeling and classifying the AfD as an extremist entity in its entirety last week. The process was stopped awaiting the Court in Cologne’s decision on an injunction filled by the AfD, however, it caused severe political upheaval within Germany’s new government.
Impact: The case of stripping the member of AfD his immunity further aggravated the situation with the party which is effectively in a prolonged legal battle with Germany’s government. Krah’s case would further fuel public concerns that the AfD is being largely used as an influence tool to disrupt Germany’s internal political dynamics and foreign aspirations by adversarial countries such as Russia and China. The party was largely supported by tech billionaire Elon Musk during the Feb election, while his classification as an extremist entity was strongly condemned by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump. The complete dimension of the issue with the AfD further underscores the severe problems which are caused by political entities which resort towards extremist charters and campaigns and their usage as influence tools from various countries with adversarial intent through financial support.