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AfD parliamentary group leader Weidel: party takes a penalty in court
Photo: AXEL SCHMIDT / REUTERS
The AfD wants to take action against a fine for an illegally received donation to the district association of the current chairman of the Bundestag faction, Alice Weidel.
According to SPIEGEL information, the party leadership agreed on Monday with a large majority to sue the administrative court against the Bundestag administration's penalty notice, which was served last week.
There were three abstentions, including from co-party leader Jörg Meuthen.
First, the dpa news agency reported on the decision of the party executive.
From July to September 2017, according to the Bundestag, donations of around 132,000 euros were received from Swiss accounts on the business account of the AfD district association Bodensee.
It was therefore a matter of several individual transfers.
In the opinion of the Bundestag administration, there has been a violation of the prohibition enshrined in the Political Parties Act to accept donations that amount to more than 500 euros in individual cases and for which the donor cannot be identified.
As usual in such cases, the AfD should pay a fine of three times the rate of this unauthorized donation - around 396,000 euros.
(Read more about this here.)
The AfD had submitted a list of donors.
In June 2019, however, according to the Bundestag administration, she announced "that eight alleged donors had now declared to the Konstanz public prosecutor that they had not donated."
The party therefore further explained to the Bundestag administration that it therefore "did not have any reliable knowledge of who the real donor was".
In the letter from the Bundestag to the AfD, it is said that the actual donor is named in account documents that had been secured by the Swiss judiciary.
When asked by the Konstanz public prosecutor, which is investigating the matter, the businessman did not comment on the matter.
The AfD still sees itself in the right - among other things because the district association later transferred the money back.
Several penalties from the Bundestag administration
The Bundestag administration had issued several penalties against the AfD in the past week, including payments for Weidel's election campaign that were classified as illegal.
In addition, a sanction notice of a good 108,000 euros was issued for financing the right-wing congress “European Visions - Visions for Europe” on February 13, 2016. It was organized by the then head of the North Rhine-Westphalian state association, Marcus Pretzell.
As SPIEGEL revealed in June 2017, part of the event costs had been financed from obscure sources through the Swiss PR company Goal AG.
The Bundestag administration also rated this funding as an illegal party donation.
In addition, the AfD received a penalty notice of 72,363 euros last week.
The responsible control department of the Bundestag administration complained that the party had concealed donations in kind worth 36,181.50 euros in its 2017 and 2018 annual reports.
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akm / asa / dpa