Prosecutors named him as Jian G. in a statement on Tuesday and accused him of passing information about discussions in the European Union legislature to Chinese intelligence.

The website of Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s top candidate in June’s election to the assembly, lists Jian Guo as one of his assistants. Krah said he learned of Guo’s arrest from the media and would stop working with him if the charges were proven.

Anxiety about alleged Chinese spying has mounted across Western Europe in recent months.

Three German nationals were arrested on Monday on suspicion of handing over technology with military applications.

The same day, two men were charged in Britain with spying for China, including one reported to have worked as parliamentary researcher for a prominent lawmaker in the governing Conservative Party.

And on March 25, the U.S. and Britain accused Beijing of cyberespionage against millions of people including lawmakers, academics and journalists, as well as companies such as defence contractors.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a briefing that reports of Chinese espionage in Europe were “hype” and “intended to discredit and suppress China”.

The aide, who lived in Brussels and the German city of Dresden, also spied on Chinese opposition figures in Germany, prosecutors said. He was arrested in Dresden on Monday and his apartments were searched.

“He is accused of an especially severe case of working for a foreign secret service,” the statement said.

AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla called the arrest “very disturbing” and said Krah was en route to Berlin to discuss the case, with a statement expected by Wednesday morning.

Two weeks ago, the Czech newspaper Denik Na and the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the AfD’s second most important candidate in the European Parliament election, German lawmaker Petr Bystron, had received money from a pro-Russian media site. The AfD said Bystron denied the allegation.

Konstantin von Notz, who heads the parliamentary committee supervising Germany’s intelligence services, said these were not merely individual cases but pointed to a broader AfD problem.

“The AfD is a party of dictatorships,” he said. “They don’t try to hide their contempt for our democracy and rule of law. And that clearly makes their politicians susceptible to being influenced and directed by China and Russia.”

CHINESE AND RUSSIAN THREATS INCREASE

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that if the charges were proven, it was “an attack on European democracy from within”, noting that Germany’s security services had massively increased counter-espionage due to Russian hybrid threats and Chinese snooping.

A year ago, Krah had rejected allegations that his aide was lobbying for China as slander against himself.

“It is about a staffer born in China,” he wrote on the social media platform X. “He is a German citizen, AfD member, studied in Dresden and speaks fluent German and English. There is a lot of lying going on.”

Krah has, over the years, advocated deeper links with China.

“The deepening of economic, technological and trade cooperation between China and Germany is indispensable for Germany’s development,” he was quoted as saying by the Global Times in 2022. “The anti-China forces in Germany do not represent the interests of Germany.”

The Chinese embassy in Germany, in an emailed statement, said in recent years such espionage allegations had often appeared in German and European media.

The intention of such exaggeration is obvious and is due to a “Cold War mindset” to poison the atmosphere for cooperation between China and Germany or Europe, the statement said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited China last week to improve economic relations with Germany’s biggest trade partner and address differences such as China’s support for Russia.

L'articolo Another spy bites the dust – This time it is the turn of an European AfD functionary to be arrested for being a spy. According to initial reports, Maximilian Krah’s assistant – Jian Guo – was apparently in contact with the Chinese leadership, to whom he passed sensitive information. Europe seems to have no defence: in recent weeks we have reported on a network of spies infiltrating institutions on behalf of the Russians. Now this development, coincidentally a few days after the meeting between Scholz and Xi proviene da Bubble report.

The institution has directed all lawmakers within the subcommittee to submit their phones to the Parliament’s IT service for thorough examinations to identify any potential spyware.

This development comes amid heightened concerns over cyberattacks and foreign interference in the lead-up to the EU election scheduled for June.

A December report by POLITICO highlighted internal concerns regarding the European Parliament’s cybersecurity posture, indicating that it falls short of industry standards and is not adequately aligned with the level of threat posed by state-sponsored hackers and other threat actors.

During a routine check on Tuesday, spyware traces were found on a member’s phone, highlighting the susceptibility of EU officials to cyber threats.

The motive behind the targeting is currently unclear.

However, Parliament’s Deputy Spokesperson Delphine Colard emphasised the importance of the findings, especially considering the geopolitical context and the sensitive nature of the files handled by the security and defense subcommittee.

These revelations follow a string of previous incidents involving European Parliament members being targeted with spyware.

In 2022, researchers revealed infections of Pegasus and Candiru, two types of hacking tools, on the phones of MEPs associated with the Catalan independence movement.

Similarly, Greek MEP Nikos Androulakis, along with other Greek political figures, was identified as a target of Predator, another spyware tool, in the same year.

Additionally, Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola encountered attempted hacking using spyware.

In response to mounting concerns, European Parliament members established a special inquiry committee in 2022 to investigate these incidents.

The committee scrutinised various scandals across EU member states and highlighted instances where governments abused hacking tools for political purposes.

To address the persistent threat of spyware infiltration, Parliament’s IT service initiated a program last April to conduct regular checks on members’ phones.

Since its inception, the program has conducted “hundreds of operations” aimed at safeguarding the integrity of parliamentary communications and data.

L'articolo Someone is keeping an eye on MEPs – The European Parliament on Wednesday urged members of its defence subcommittee to have their mobile phones checked for spyware after traces of hacking were found on two devices. Several reports, the latest published in December, have shown that precautions against this type of attack are woefully inadequate. A danger that is as real as ever, given that elections are due in June and the risk of interference is not just a risk proviene da Bubble report.

According to The Insider, Tatjana Zdanoka served as an “international observer” in Moscow’s 2014 referendum that paved the way for the annexation of Crimea despite international condemnation of the move, made trips to Syria to meet with Russia-allied President Bashar al-Assad, and voted against the EU’s resolution condemning the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Zdanoka was allegedly in regular contact with Dmitry Gladey, a Federal Security Service (FSB) officer from St. Petersburg, as far back as 2005.

In their first email exchange, she sent Gladey a draft agenda and press release for a conference in Estonia, which was organized to discuss “the experience of Russian politicians” working in local European government.

At the time, Estonian intelligence services suspected that one of the conference’s organizers, the non-governmental organization European Russian Alliance, was an FSB front. 

The Insider did not say how it obtained the leaked email exchanges. 

Zdanoka admitted she knew Gladey but did not explain why she regularly sent him emails with attachments called “reports” and shared draft initiatives and press releases.

According to The Insider, the Latvian politician continued to work with Gladey until 2013, when she was assigned a new “handler” by the name of Sergei Beltyukov, another FSB officer from St. Petersburg. 

She was also said to have worked with a third Russian agent named Artem Kureyev, who the outlet describes as a self-proclaimed “human rights ombudsman of Estonia.”

Zdankoa filed an application at the Belgian Embassy in Moscow to help Kureyev obtain an EU visa just weeks after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. 

The Insider quoted her as saying that Kureyev “was invited to participate in one of several conferences that I organized in the European Parliament with the support of my political group [Greens/European Free Alliance], namely the EU Forum for Russian-Speaking Youth.”

Zdanoka did not appear to deny having worked for the FSB, but in an email to the investigative news outlet, she wrote: “I cannot consider this text to be questions put to me because it is based on information that you supposedly have, which by definition, you should not have.”

An unidentified high-ranking member of the Greens/European Free Alliance, to which the Zdankoa used to belong, said she was “unsurprised” about the news of the Latvian politician’s alleged espionage for Moscow. 

L'articolo Fifth columnists, fifth columnists everywhere – Latvian MEP Tatjana Zdanoka allegedly worked for Russian intelligence from 2004 to 2017. A scoop by ‘The Insider’ revealed that she was in direct contact with two well-known FSB officials, with whom she exchanged emails. The risks of overextension… proviene da Bubble report.