According to the AfD, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office searched the party’s federal office in Berlin on Wednesday. “Since this morning, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office has been conducting a search of the premises of the federal office of the Alternative for Germany without having previously sent an inquiry to the AfD about the facts to be clarified,” said the party. The public prosecutor’s office initially gave no information on this.
According to a party spokesman, the main issue is an investigation against former party leader Jörg Meuthen, “whereby there is obviously a need for clarification on a few points regarding the reports from 2016 to 2018 and the financing of the 2017 election campaign.”
The two co-party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla criticized the approach. Weidel described it as “an extremely unusual and extremely disproportionate measure to intimidate the AfD as the most important opposition party in Germany”. Chrupalla said: “If the prosecutor had asked us beforehand, we would have answered accordingly and provided documents.” According to him, “entire hard drives, mailboxes and file folders were copied”.
