Maximilian Krah: espionage affair against previous employees

The Federal Prosecutor has raised charges against a former employee of the AfD politician Maximilian Krah and a suspected complicity for presumed espionage for China. This was announced by the authority in Karlsruhe on Tuesday.

Jian G., arrested a year ago, is said to have repeatedly passed on information about negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament and spied on Chinese opposition figures in Germany for the intelligence service. G. also compiled information about leading AfD politicians.

According to the Karlsruhe authority, German citizen Jian G. has been an employee of a Chinese secret service since 2002. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office had him arrested in Dresden in April 2024. It accuses him of a particularly severe case of intelligence agent activity.

Jian G. is said to have procured more than 500 documents, “including some who classified the European Parliament as particularly sensitive”.

In 2023 and 2024, the man spied Chinese opposition and dissidents in Germany. For this, he had appeared on social media as a critic of the Chinese government.

Shortly after the arrest, the highest indictment of Germany’s office from G. and Krah had been searched in the European Parliament in Brussels. In doing so, she emphasized that the search by Krah’s offices was “a measure among witnesses”. The EU Parliament approved the enter of the premises.

“After almost a year, the expected indictment has now been raised. I have already drawn all the necessary consequences in 2024 and will follow the process with interest to find out what happened specifically,” said Krah that star. So far, the AfD has no information about which concrete information has collected the alleged spy on the party leadership (especially Chrupalla and Weidel). The AfD was also not announced whether this was done at all.

At the end of September, officials from the Federal Criminal Police Office on behalf of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Leipzig arrested a Chinese woman who worked for a logistics service company at Leipzig/Halle Airport.

It is said to have passed on information about flights, freight and passengers of the Saxon airport to the former Krah employee-the main focus was on transporting armaments and people with connections to a German armaments company. The woman is also suspicious of the intelligence agent activity for a Chinese secret service.

Both have been in custody since then. The Dresden Higher Regional Court must now decide whether it allows the indictment and starts a process.

Krah had told the “Bild” newspaper after G. arrested that his employee had only maintained his knowledge of “contacts to official Chinese positions in the message”. After the arrest of the Chinese, he said about the short message service X that there was no connection to his work. The accused only communicated with his ex-employee. “The only allegation that I make in connection with my Chinese-born ex-employee is not to be careful not to be careful.”

On the same day as G., the federal prosecutor had three more suspected spies for China in Düsseldorf and Bad Homburg. The two men and a woman in Germany are said to have procured information about military technology in connection with research projects in order to pass them on to the Chinese secret service. China rejected the reports of his own spies in Germany and spoke of defamation.

The then Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) warned of further spy cases. The cabinet also decided stricter security checks so that Saboture and informant foreign secret services do not find any access to intelligence services and other security -relevant areas in the state and business.

The amendment to the Security Check Act was no longer advised in the Bundestag before the early Bundestag election. Among other things, she also provided for increased internet research on social networks.

Over time, more about the history of Krah’s ex-employee. G. had tried to work for the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) a few years ago. However, the foreign intelligence service refused to collaboration according to information from the German Press Agency at the time.

Later, the man said that the Saxon constitutional protection was also presented, but where he also did not come into play – also because he was not considered reliable.

Note: This article has been updated and further information was added