A former aide to German far-right lawmaker Maximilian Krah in the European Parliament was sentenced Tuesday to four years and nine months in prison for spying on behalf of China.
The court in Dresden found Jian Guo guilty of acting as an agent for a Chinese intelligence service while working for Krah, a member of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
An accomplice of Guo, a woman named only as Yaqi X., was given a suspended sentence of one year and nine months.
"There is no question that you were an employee of a Chinese intelligence service," presiding judge Hans Schlueter-Staats said to Guo, citing wiretapped conversations and other evidence.
Prosecutors had sought seven and a half years in jail for Guo, a German national who worked as a Brussels-based staffer for Krah between 2019 and 2024.
Guo had worked for Chinese intelligence from 2007 and used his position in Krah's office to gather intelligence on European affairs and on the AfD, according to the written verdict.
The court heard he passed on hundreds of documents and collected information about leading AfD politicians, including party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla.
He also spied on Chinese opposition figures and dissidents in Germany.
During the trial, Guo had denied working for a Chinese intelligence service and said he was innocent.
Chinese national Yaqi X., who worked at a firm that provided Leipzig airport with logistics services, admitted she had passed on information to Guo about flight schedules and cargo movements.
She collected "information about flights, cargo and passengers... in particular about military transports," the court said.
Krah, now an MP in Berlin, said he was not surprised by the verdict.
"My main concern now is to gain clarity about the espionage activities of which I was a victim," he said in a post on the X platform.
Krah told the court earlier this month he had employed Guo because of his language skills and experience of running an import-export firm.
"At no time was I warned by any public authority, whether from the Federal Republic (of Germany) or the EU, of any danger," Krah said on the witness stand.
Security checks at the European Parliament were "very thorough", he added, meaning that he assumed "everything would be fine".
Krah is under investigation separately on suspicion of money-laundering and taking bribes from Chinese sources during his time as an MEP.
News weekly Der Spiegel has reported, citing the investigation file, that the AfD politician received more than 50,000 euros ($58,700) from companies close to Guo between 2019 and 2022 alone.
- Offices searched -
The accusations against his former aide -- along with comments minimising the crimes of the Nazis' notorious SS paramilitaries -- led to Krah being excluded from the AfD's delegation in the European parliament in 2024.
The controversy also prompted the AfD's expulsion from the Identity and Democracy (ID) group.
But Krah was elected to the German parliament in February this year, when the AfD scored a record 20.8 percent of the vote.
Earlier this month, the Bundestag lifted his immunity as part of the corruption probe.
Krah's offices in Berlin, Brussels and Dresden were searched along with his home, and documents and electronic devices seized, according to prosecutors.
On X, Krah called the allegations against him "absurd, fabricated and purely politically motivated".
"The search of my offices is an attempt at intimidation, which I will defend myself against," he said at the time.
Krah has also been accused of illicit links to Russia, which he denies.
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