ZURICH, November 02 (AJP) -Leaked internal emails from the far-right Alternative for Germany have raised new questions over whether party co-leader Alice Weidel knew more about an illegal Swiss donation than she has admitted, German media reported.
The emails do not settle the matter. Not all of them have been confirmed as genuine, it is unclear whether they refer to the disputed donation, and they do not prove any wrongdoing. Weidel's spokesperson said she stands by everything she has said.
The case dates back to 2017, when Weidel's local party branch near Lake Constance received about 132,000 euros through a Swiss company. German law bars parties from accepting such donations from outside the European Union. The party was later fined 396,000 euros, and prosecutors dropped their investigation into Weidel.
When the scandal broke in 2018, Weidel said she had learned about the money only weeks after it arrived. According to German media reports, the leaked emails show she wrote in July 2017 that donations for her online campaign had been announced to her, and suggest she arranged how the money would be received and spent.
The emails were stolen in a hack of an IT company working for the party in late September. Hundreds of thousands of emails from several party accounts, including Weidel's, were published online in mid-October along with internal documents and databases.
The party confirmed the hack and called it an attack on democracy but declined to say whether the material is genuine. The hackers have described themselves as activists hoping the leak will help lead to a ban on the party.
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