“No one is surprised”
Who is the man who is said to have spied for China?
April 24, 2024, 11:30 a.m
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The surprise is apparently limited. A close associate of AfD politician Krah has to be taken into custody on suspicion of espionage. But what exactly is he accused of? And who is this man anyway?
The allegations against Jian G. are serious. The assistant to the AfD’s top candidate for the European elections, Maximilian Krah, is said to have spied on behalf of China. The police in Dresden arrested him on Monday and he is now in custody. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office summarizes the allegations as follows: “Jian G. is an employee of a Chinese secret service. Since 2019 he has been working for a German member of the European Parliament. In January 2024, the accused repeatedly gave his intelligence officer information about negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament He also spied on Chinese opposition figures in Germany for the intelligence service.”
G. and Krah’s paths crossed some time ago. As T-Online writes, according to Krah’s statements, the two met in Dresden in 2014, where Krah worked as a lawyer and took on the mandate for G’s import and export company. This relationship soon became more. G. told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” last year that he had been working for Krah since 2019, initially in a half-time position and since March 2020 in a full position. “I don’t have any part-time work outside of that.”
G., who was born in China and now has German citizenship, speaks fluent German and reportedly studied history and German in Dresden in the early 2000s. Apparently he also became politically active from an early age. According to the SZ, he was a member of the SPD until 2015. He is also said to have run an import-export company for solar and LED technology and to have established contacts with China for East German communities.
He is said to have founded a lobbying association with Krah and business partners, reports T-Online. Together they guided local politicians from Pirna, including the current mayor, to China in order to initiate a town partnership. They are also said to have met representatives of the IDCPC secret service during the trip. According to the report, several payments from China flowed into G’s private environment before and after the trip. Despite his contacts with China’s government authorities, he apparently also traveled in circles with exiled Chinese opposition figures and even met the Dalai Lama.
Also offered to German authorities
The German security authorities are said to have become aware of G. early on. According to ARD, G. served them as an informant around ten years ago. Apparently in vain. He is said to have been classified as unreliable and suspected of being a possible double agent for Beijing. G. told T-Online that the only thing that was important to him was German-Chinese friendship.
The Green Party European Parliamentarian Reinhard Bütikofer expressed the suspicion that there could be more to it early on. When the Parliament’s Trade Committee discussed the future China strategy for 2021, according to the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, Krah and G. stood out unpleasantly: Krah wanted to prevent a tougher course towards Beijing. “I’ve had enough of a Chinese spy sitting here!” Bütikofer then said indignantly to G. Krah then accused him of racism, Bütikofer apologized.
“Nobody knows what they’re doing”
However, AfD politicians in the EU Parliament were probably also surprised by Krah’s proximity to China. “You just had to look at Krah’s voting behavior. He almost always only represented the interests of the Chinese state,” said AfD MP Nicolaus Fest to the FAZ. Nobody took Krah’s position seriously anymore. Once he tried to find out more about G. However, he had recently deleted his social media profiles. “I know every assistant in the hallway here, but I hardly ever see G..” A year ago he declared: “Nobody knows what he does, nobody has contact with him, nobody seriously believes that he is here to advance the interests of the AfD.”
Espionage allegations against G. were already circulating back then, but Krah spoke to the magazine “The European Conservative” of a “witch hunt” against his assistant. He doesn’t have the “slightest reason” to suspect him of being a spy.
After the news about G’s arrest, neither Bütikofer nor AfD politicians were surprised. “No one is surprised by us,” said a well-known AfD politician, who wished to remain anonymous, to the SZ. “We puke in the jet.”
Krah, who himself is under pressure because of possible Russian connections, has now publicly distanced himself from his long-time employee and has terminated the 43-year-old. Apparently a crime had been committed in his office, said Krah. “It’s very unpleasant and it’s in my best interest to clear this up.”