The party headquarters of the AfD in Berlin has been searched – numerous police officers were involved. The Berlin public prosecutor said that there was initial suspicion of violating the party law and of infidelity. The allegations are directed against former party leader Jörg Meuthen and ex-Federal Treasurer Klaus-Günther Fohrmann. In total, judicial search warrants were carried out in seven places on Wednesday, including Berlin, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia, it said.
The investigations against Meuthen and Fohrmann are about the years 2016, 2017 and 2018. The reports submitted by the AfD to the Bundestag for these years contained “presumably incorrect information regarding party donations”. The searches would have led to “the discovery of documents and data carriers”, which would now be evaluated.
The former AfD federal spokesman Jörg Meuthen with his successor Alice Weidel (archive)
Meuthen left the AfD in January and is now a non-attached member of the EU Parliament and a member of the German Center Party. The 61-year-old emphasized that he was still of the opinion that the allegations against him were “unfounded”.
“Extremely unusual”
The current party leadership described the raids as disproportionate and “politically motivated”. Alice Weidel spoke of an “extremely unusual and extremely disproportionate measure to intimidate the AfD as the most important opposition party in Germany”. Co-chair Tino Chrupalla added: “If the public prosecutor had asked us in advance, we would have answered accordingly and made documents available.”
wa/no (dpa, afp)
