China’s paid espionage infiltrates Germany, and Europe in general. The German police arrested an assistant to a far-right German MEP on Monday on suspicion of “a particularly serious case of working for a foreign secret service,” the Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Tuesday.
Jian Guao, a German citizen who collaborates with the leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party for the June European elections, Maximilian Krah, is accused of “having transmitted on several occasions in January 2024 information about the negotiations and decisions of the European Parliament.” to his intelligence service client,” that is, China, the Prosecutor’s Office explains in its statement.
Jian Guao, 43, had worked for Krah since 2019 and lived between Brussels and Dresden, a city in eastern Germany. A spokesperson for the European Parliament confirmed to Efe that, “given the seriousness of the revelations,” the institution suspended the assistant’s contract with immediate effect. According to prosecutors, Jin Guao also spied on Chinese opposition figures in Germany.
The suspect was arrested in Dresden – his home was also searched – on the same day that the police arrested three Germans who “worked for the Chinese secret services (MSS) from an undefined date, before June 2022”, said the Attorney General’s Office, in charge of espionage cases in Germany.
The three suspects, Herwig F, Ina F. and Thomas R, were arrested by officers of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in Düsseldorf and Bad Homburg in western Germany. “Thomas R. worked as an agent for a member of the MSS in China. “He collected information for him in Germany about innovative technologies that can be used for military purposes,” the prosecutor’s office added.
Herwig F. and Ina F., owners of a company in Düsseldorf, would have acted as intermediaries with people from the world of science and research. China “firmly” rejected the German accusations, according to the Chinese state agency Xinhua.
These arrests linked to Chinese espionage come a few days after the arrest in Germany of two German-Russians suspected of spying to commit sabotage against industries and military installations, and also against American barracks in this country, with the aim of “undermining the military support provided by Germany to Ukraine against the war of Russian aggression,” as the Attorney General’s Office said last Wednesday.
