Germany: a Chinese woman arrested for leaking sensitive defense secrets to China
German authorities revealed on Tuesday the arrest of a woman accused of passing sensitive information to China’s intelligence service via an agent working for a far-right member of the European Parliament.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office said the accused, identified as Yaki X, worked for a logistics company at Leipzig-Halle Airport, where she provided a Chinese intelligence employee, Jian Gi, with information about flights, cargo and passengers between mid-August 2023 and mid-February 2024.
The prosecutor’s statement explained that the leaked information included in particular details about the transfer of defense equipment and people with connections to a German defense company, adding, “the accused is likely to be an intelligence agent working for a Chinese intelligence agency”.
Last April, German authorities arrested Jian Gi, after identifying him as a Chinese agent while working as an assistant in the office of Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament for the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
Maximilian Krah appointed Jian Gi as his assistant at the European Parliament in 2019, where he allegedly passed information from the European Parliament to Chinese intelligence.
It’s worth noting that Krah, who was the AfD’s lead candidate in this year’s European Parliament elections, was expelled from the delegation after the affair was revealed in April, but was re-elected for another term as he couldn’t be removed from the list of candidates.
