The Munich public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation against Petr Bistron, a member of parliament from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, on suspicion of bribery and money laundering.

According to information from BILD, a few twenty-four hours earlier, the Anti-Crime Service submitted a request to Parliament to lift his immunity.

In the competent parliamentary committee that decided on the request, no party voted against, while the AfD abstained.

Following this early in the morning of the same day, men of the Service raided the office of the German MP in the Parliament, while searches were carried out in offices and buildings in cities in Bavaria, as well as in Majorca.

The investigations in Bavaria involved 11 prosecutors and 70 police officers from the Bavarian Crime Agency. Homes of people who do not appear as suspects in the case were also searched, as a spokesman for the prosecution said. The main objective was to seize documents and data in order to be investigated in relation to the case.

Incriminating evidence from Czech secret services

Information has recently come to light, mainly from the Czech intelligence services, that Petr Bistron received money from Russia in connection with the Russian-influenced online news portal “Voice of Europe”. Until March 2024 it was based in Prague, then closed after a general ban across Europe and moved its headquarters to Kazakhstan. The German AfD MP had spread pro-Russian statements in interviews on this portal. According to BILD, Bistron was allegedly bribed by controversial oligarchs from Putin’s inner circle.

Specific media reports state that the Czech secret service BIS was able to monitor a conversation between Bistron and Ukrainian businessman Artem Marchevsky, who is loyal to the Kremlin. The meeting reportedly took place in Prague. BIS had apparently bugged Marchewski’s car and thus recorded the conversation between the two, during which Bistron was allegedly handed money totaling €20,000. At least that is the conclusion of the BIS and several MPs who listened to the recording.

Who is Bistron?

Bistron is also number two on the AfD ballot for June’s European elections. He was born in the former Czechoslovakia, but lives in Bavaria, where he was elected as a Member of Parliament in 2017. He joined the AfD in 2013, earlier he was a member of the Liberal Party (FDP). He professes to be an admirer of the far-right former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, believes Islam has no place in Germany and said of Russia’s attack on Ukraine that it marks “the end of the global monopoly with the US as the sole hegemonic power”. He commented on the German government’s decision to supply German Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine: “German tanks against Russia in Ukraine. Their grandfathers already tried that” openly adopting the Kremlin’s propaganda narrative.

According to a Zeit Online investigation, Bistron is one of 18 AfD MPs suspected of employing far-right activists for their parliamentary work. According to this investigation, a former Bistron employee was a writer at the publishing house Kopp, whose public records have been monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the state of Baden-Württemberg for several years, while also writing for Getz Kubicek’s magazine Sezession , who is considered the ideological head of the New Right in Germany.

DPA, Tagesschau, BILD