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AfD faces fine for allegedly breaking campaign financing laws

The head of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Jörg Meuthen, said Tuesday his party was facing a hefty fine for allegedly violating campaign financing rules.

Published: 12 March 2019 11:38 CET
AfD faces fine for allegedly breaking campaign financing laws
Meuthen speaking in Osterhofen, Bavaria on Ash Wednesday. Photo: DPA

Meuthen told the daily Die Welt that a Swiss advertising agency had provided assistance valued at nearly €90,000 while he was running for a seat in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament in 2016.

Under German law, campaign donations from non-EU countries are illegal. Switzerland, though linked to the EU through numerous treaties, is not a member of the bloc.

Meuthen, who is carrying the party's banner into European elections in May, insisted that he had not received money “either from (ad agency) Goal AG or its chief executive Alexander Segert”.

SEE ALSO: AfD provides list of names behind 'illegal' campaign finance scandal

However he received in-kind donations from the firm including around €27,000 in adverts, €17,000 worth of flyers, €41,000 in billboards and €5,000 in graphic layout work.

In exchange, Meuthen said, he signed a release form allowing Goal AG to use his “photograph and personal data for advertising purposes”.

Meuthen told Welt that an oversight office in the federal parliament had
informed him that the AfD, Germany's biggest opposition party, would be fined more than €400,000 for his and another official's suspected campaign finance violations.

He said he would challenge the penalty on the grounds that the party did
not break German law as the assistance was not a donation as such and came from EU citizens living in Switzerland.

It is not the first time that the anti-Islam, anti-immigration AfD has found itself in hot water over financing.

German media revealed in November that the AfD's Lake Constance branch received 18 donations from Swiss pharmaceutical firm PWS between July and September 2017, totalling some 150,000 Swiss francs (€130,000).

The affair led prosecutors to ask parliament to lift the immunity of prominent far-right MP Alice Weidel over suspicious campaign donations.

The AfD has railed against Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal immigration
policies and scored nearly 13 percent in the September 2017 general election.

It is currently polling at between 10 and 12 percent ahead of the European election.

SEE ALSO: AfD elects leader duo amid pro-refugee protests

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ELECTIONS

Germany’s far-right AfD ahead in regional poll with anti-shutdown stance

Best known as an anti-migrant party, Germany's far-right AfD has seized on the coronavirus pandemic to court a new type of voter ahead of regional elections in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday: anti-shutdown activists.

Published: 2 June 2021 11:05 CEST
Germany's far-right AfD ahead in regional poll with anti-shutdown stance
Björn Höcke, party chairman in Thuringia, at an election event in Merseburg, Saxony-Anhalt on May 29th. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Sebastian Willnow

“Sending so many people into poverty with so few infections is problematic for us,” is how Oliver Kirchner, the AfD’s top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, views the measures ordered by the government to halt Covid-19 transmission.

The anti-shutdown stance seems to be paying off in the former East German state. The party is riding high in the polls and even stands a chance of winning a regional election for the first time.

READ ALSO: Germany’s far-right AfD chooses hardline team ahead of national elections

Surveys have the AfD neck-and-neck with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU, with the Bild daily even predicting victory for the far-right party on 26 percent, ahead of the CDU on 25 percent.

In Saxony-Anhalt’s last election in 2016, the CDU was the biggest party, scoring 30 percent and forming a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens.

But the CDU has taken a hammering in the opinion polls in recent months, with voters unhappy with the government’s pandemic management and a corruption scandal involving shady coronavirus mask contracts.

Social deprivation

A victory for the AfD would spell a huge upset for the conservatives just four months ahead of a general election in Germany — the first in 16 years not to feature Merkel.

They started out campaigning against the euro currency in 2013. Then in 2015 they capitalised on public anger over Merkel’s 2015 decision to let in a wave of asylum seekers from conflict-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The party caused a sensation in Germany’s last general election in 2017 when it secured almost 13 percent of the vote, entering parliament for the first time as the largest opposition party.

Troubled by internal divisions and accusations of ties to neo-Nazi fringe groups, the party has more recently seen its support at the national level stagnate at between 10 and 12 percent.

READ ALSO: Germany’s far-right AfD investigated over election ties

The party is also controversial in Saxony-Anhalt itself. In state capital Magdeburg, posters showing local candidate Hagen Kohl have been defaced with Hitler moustaches and the words “Never again”.

For wine merchant Jan Buhmann, 57, victory for the far-right party would be a “disaster”.

“The pandemic has shown that we need new ideas. We need young people, we need dynamism in the state. For me, the AfD does not stand for that,” he said.

Yet the AfD’s core supporters have largely remained unwavering in the former East German states.

For pensioner Hans-Joachim Peters, 73, the AfD is “the only party that actually tells it like it is”.

Politicians should “think less about Europe and more about Germany”, he told AFP in Magdeburg. AfD campaigners there were handing out flyers calling for “resistance” and “an end to all anti-constitutional restrictions on our liberties”.

Political scientist Hajo Funke of Berlin’s Free University puts the AfD’s core strength in eastern Germany down to “social deprivation and frustration” resulting from problems with reunification.

The party’s latest anti-corona restrictions stance has also helped it play up its anti-establishment credentials, adding some voters to its core base, he said.

Other east German states in which the AfD has a stronghold, such as Saxony and Thuringia, continue to have the highest 7-day incidences per 100,000 residents in the country. Saxony-Anhalt’s 7-day incidence, however, currently is below the national average (31.3) as of Wednesday June 3rd.

READ ALSO: Why are coronavirus figures so high in German regions with far-right leanings?

Hijab snub

Funke predicted the AfD would attract broadly the same voters in
Saxony-Anhalt as it did in 2016, when it won 24 percent of the vote.

“Some have dropped off because the party is too radical, some radicals who didn’t vote are now voting and some of those who are anti-corona are also voting for the AfD,” he said.

The Sachsen-Anhalt-Monitor 2020 report, commissioned by the local government, found that the main concern for voters in the region was the economic fallout from the pandemic. But the AfD’s core selling point — immigration and refugees — was number two on their list.

According to AfD candidate Kirchner, many people in Saxony-Anhalt still view the influx of refugees to Germany “very critically”.

“And I think they are right,” he said at a campaign stand in Magdeburg decked in the AfD’s signature blue. “Who is going to rebuild Syria? Who is going to do that if everyone comes here?”

When a young woman wearing a hijab walked past the stand, no one attempted to hand her a flyer.

By Femke Colborne

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