The employee of Member of the European Parliament Maximilian Krah, who is suspected of espionage, worked for the German domestic intelligence service for years before he was employed by the AfD politician. The Bild newspaper reports that Jian G. had been listed as an informant by Saxony’s domestic intelligence service since 2007 at the latest. He had previously unsuccessfully offered himself to the Federal Intelligence Service. The latter then referred G. to the Saxon State Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Since 2007, he is said to have provided information to the intelligence service on his own initiative, which dealt with Chinese state actors taking action against Chinese exiles in Germany. Eight years after his recruitment, the Saxons received a tip-off from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution that G. could be a double agent, the newspaper reports. In 2015 and 2016, G. was then directly observed by the counterintelligence department of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and was then also questioned by the intelligence officers about the suspicion. However, the investigators were unable to prove with legal certainty that he had also spied for China. He is still being investigated as a suspected case. In 2018, G. was finally removed as an informant by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
At this point, G. had already made contact with Krah and had been working as his colleague in the EU Parliament since 2019. Since 2020, he has been under intensive surveillance by the domestic intelligence service and was finally arrested in April 2024. Despite the suspicion of espionage, the Chinese national was granted a German passport, was also a member of the Social Democratic Party for a time and was able to pass the security check in the EU Parliament. In addition, the office of Thomas Haldenwang (CDU) failed to inform Krah or the AfD about the suspicion of espionage against the employee. According to the newspaper JUNGE FREIHEIT, this was actually standard procedure in such cases. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution did not respond to a corresponding enquiry from the JUNGE FREIHEIT.
Krah himself commented on the new information. The politician wrote on X: “Remarkable turn of events!”
Krah-Mitarbeiter war langjähriger Zuträger des Verfassungsschutz (jungefreiheit.de)