The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office announced on Tuesday that an aide to a German member of the European Parliament has been arrested on suspicion of spying for China.
The arrest took place on Monday in the eastern city of Dresden. The incident came just hours after German authorities arrested three people in the country’s west on suspicion of leaking technical data used for ship propulsion and exporting high-power lasers to China. It is not clear whether the two incidents are related.
Prosecutors said Jiang was identified under German privacy rules and had been working for a German MEP since 2019.
Prosecutors called Mr. G an “official of the Chinese secret services” and accused him of repeatedly passing information on parliamentary deliberations and decisions to Chinese intelligence agencies in January. Mr. G, a German national, has also been charged with spying for Chinese rebels in Germany, according to a statement from the public prosecutor’s office.
The Chinese government denied any involvement in the incident.
“We are taking note of the relevant reports and related hype,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday. “In fact, it has become clear to everyone recently that the so-called ‘Chinese spy threat theory’ is not new in European public discourse,” he added.
Nancy Feiser, Germany’s interior minister responsible for homeland security, said the allegations were “extremely serious”.
“If it is confirmed that the European Parliament was spying on Chinese intelligence services, this would be an attack from within on European democracy,” he said in a statement on Tuesday morning.
Maximilian Kula, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, confirmed that the arrested man was one of his employees.
“If the allegations are found to be true, they will result in immediate dismissal,” Kula wrote to X.
A spokesperson for the Belgian public prosecutor’s office, which is responsible for investigating the aide’s workplace in the European Parliament in Brussels, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the European Parliament also did not respond to a request for comment.
Kula has been a member of the European Parliament since 2019 and positions himself on the right wing of the AfD. He is seen as the party’s front-runner in June’s European Parliament elections.
The arrest of a close aide is not the first time that Kula’s name has come into contact with suspected foreign spies.
Mr. Kula secured an entry badge to the European Parliament for a Polish man who was later accused of spying for Russia, according to internal records reviewed by The New York Times.
Matina Stevis-Gridnev Contributed to the report from Brussels.
