In the affair of covert election campaign aid and party donations from Switzerland to top politicians of the AfD, there may be a first trace to a suspected lender.
As NDR, WDR and "Süddeutsche Zeitung" report in cooperation with the Zurich "Tages-Anzeiger" could behind disguised payments to AfD parliamentary leader Alice Weidel of 75-year-old real estate entrepreneur Henning Conle from Duisburg, who today lives in Switzerland and its Family should have assets in at least hundreds of millions.
Among other things, the media relies on research, according to which a middleman, who directed the donation to Weidel through his Zurich pharmaceutical company, "as a good friend of Conle. His family had not responded to media inquiries.
Also the SPIEGEL and the ARD politics magazine "Report Mainz" are indications, which point to the environment Conles. Accordingly, covert election campaign support could have been financed from the Conle fortune in favor of AfD boss Jörg Meuthen.
The starting point of the indicator chain of "Report Mainz" and SPIEGEL is a confidential list of ten alleged patrons, the AfD leader Jörg Meuthen in the Baden-Württemberg state election campaign with a € 90,000 expensive advertising campaign should have supported.
It is now clear that some of the persons are hired barges. However, at least two of the ten alleged patrons have direct or indirect links to the Conle family.
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For example, the listed businessman M. from the province of Antwerp works for a Belgian Conle company headed by Henning Conle and his son.
On Wednesday, M. denied "report Mainz" to have given money for Meuthen's election campaign. He confirmed, however, that he had once received a call from Switzerland and had been asked to provide his name. For what exactly, he did not know that. He did not want to say who the caller was.
According to research by SPIEGEL and "Report Mainz", another person on the list of alleged Meuthen supporters is Deutsche D., who runs a business in Zurich.
He also denied "Report Mainz" on Tuesday, ever having given money for Meuthen's election campaign. He could not explain how his name came on the list. However, he admitted on demand that he was acquainted with the junior of the real estate patriarch Conle.
Conle Senior, in turn, is at least indirectly known to Alexander Segert, the head of the Zurich PR firm Goal AG, which implemented costly advertising measures for AfD CEO Meuthen in 2016.
For example, the names of the real estate tycoon Conle and the agency boss Segert can be found on a list of sponsors who co-financed an anniversary celebration of the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP) in early 2017.
A plenipotentiary Conles was on Thursday for an opinion initially unattainable.
Meuthen had repeatedly rejected accusations of illegal party funding. He had always behaved correctly, the people on said list were not known to him.