Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) faced further scrutiny on Thursday as more reports emerged about party members employing the relatives of fellow lawmakers.
This time the spotlight was on the party’s co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, who acknowledged that he employs the wife of an AfD member of the Saxony state parliament, Robert Kuhnert, in two of his constituency offices.
In a post on X, Chrupalla said Kuhnert’s wife coordinates citizens’ enquiries and visitor trips to Germany’s lower house of parliament for him in his constituency offices in the Saxon towns of Weisswasser and Niesky.
Chrupalla said the employee has been working for him since 2017, while her husband was elected to the state parliament in 2019.
“We are not related, nor do we have any overlapping roles in his office,” he emphasized.
The Saxony state parliament’s website says Robert Kuhnert has been a member of the AfD since 2015. According to the website of the AfD district association in the Saxon city of Görlitz, he shares the constituency offices in Niesky and Weisswasser with Chrupalla.
In the neighbouring state of Saxony-Anhalt, several cases have recently come to light in which family members of AfD politicians have been employed by other party lawmakers. Chrupalla himself began his X post with the words: “In light of recent events.”
Chrupalla had previously said that while these contracts were legally valid and not objectionable, they do “leave a bad taste in the mouth.”
In an apparent attempt to dispel fears that his own family members could be employed by the party, Chrupalla ended his post on Thursday: “P.S. At home, we agree that one person in politics is enough ;).”