More than 420,000 leaked emails have reopened a controversy over illegal donations to Germany’s Alternative for Germany party, while newly examined correspondence reveals previously undisclosed disagreements within its leadership. The revelations could also influence the continuing debate over the party’s constitutional status.
Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) is facing renewed scrutiny after hackers published a substantial archive of internal correspondence, exposing details of party finances, political strategy and disputes among senior officials.
The material, released on 19 October 2026, comprises approximately 421,000 emails and nearly 50,000 accompanying documents, amounting to some 281 gigabytes of data. The files cover more than a decade of party activity, including correspondence involving co-leader Alice Weidel, former chairman Alexander Gauland and other senior figures.
The AfD confirmed that its hosting provider had suffered a cyberattack in September. According to the party, the attackers obtained information from a limited number of email accounts, many of which had not been actively used for several years.
The identity of those responsible remains unknown.
The documents are being examined by several investigative teams, including ZDF, Der Spiegel and Austria’s Der Standard, with technical assistance from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
The Swiss donations controversy returns
The most consequential findings so far concern Weidel’s knowledge of illegal campaign donations received during Germany’s 2017 federal election.
At the time, approximately €132,000 was transferred through Swiss companies into accounts belonging to the AfD’s Bodensee district organisation. The payments were designated for Weidel’s election campaign, particularly its social media activities.
When the transactions became public in 2018, Weidel maintained that she had not known about the money until September 2017 and described the donations as unsolicited.
However, correspondence examined by German investigators and journalists raises questions about that account.
In an email dated 10 July 2017, attributed to Weidel, she told her district treasurer that campaign donations had been promised and requested that the party’s bank account be checked twice weekly.
She also asked to receive confirmation of incoming payments so that campaign expenditure could be planned.
Four days later, the first payment arrived from Switzerland.
Further correspondence indicates that Weidel arranged a separate campaign account and obtained authority to direct expenditure from donations earmarked for her election activities.
The latest investigation, published on 26 October, provides additional details about the account’s management and how the party handled the ensuing controversy.
The leaked correspondence also reportedly includes invoices relating to the purchase of approximately 25,000 Facebook followers for Weidel’s campaign. The extent to which those accounts were automated, and their influence on voters, has not been established.
The AfD was previously ordered to pay approximately €396,000 for accepting the unlawful donations. Criminal proceedings involving Weidel and other district officials were discontinued in September 2021 because prosecutors found insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Weidel’s spokesman has rejected suggestions that she misrepresented events. He maintains that she had discussed possible contributions with several potential supporters but had neither anticipated specific amounts nor expected the payments from the Swiss companies concerned.
The new material does not establish that Weidel knew the identity of the ultimate donor or participated in concealing the source of the funds.
Emails reveal divisions over the party’s radical wing
Another development concerns Weidel’s earlier relationship with Björn Höcke, the influential leader of the AfD’s Thuringia organisation.
According to correspondence examined by WELT, Weidel expressed serious reservations between 2015 and 2017 about the influence of nationalist and extremist elements within the party.
She warned colleagues that associations with the anti-Islam Pegida movement and the far-right National Democratic Party risked alienating mainstream conservative voters, particularly in western Germany.
Her private concerns contrast with her subsequent accommodation of Höcke’s influence within the AfD.
The correspondence provides evidence of the internal disagreements that accompanied the party’s transformation from an initially Eurosceptic political movement into one centred increasingly on immigration, national identity and opposition to Germany’s established parties.
The revelations are particularly relevant because Weidel now promotes proposals for substantial changes to Germany’s relationship with the European Union.
As EU Today previously reported, she has advocated withdrawing Germany from the euro and the Schengen passport-free travel area.
Could the material influence an AfD ban?
The leak arrives amid continuing legal and political arguments over whether the AfD threatens Germany’s constitutional democratic order.
In May 2025, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the party as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation. However, a Cologne court issued an injunction in February 2026, preventing that classification from taking effect pending a final judicial decision.
The court acknowledged evidence of anti-constitutional tendencies within the AfD but found that the material presented was insufficient at that stage to establish that they characterised the party as a whole.
The leaked emails could potentially become relevant to future assessments.
Germany’s Interior Ministry has confirmed that domestic intelligence authorities can, in principle, consider available information when evaluating possible threats to the constitutional order.
Nevertheless, whether unlawfully obtained correspondence could be admitted as evidence, and what weight it would carry, would require separate legal examination.
A party ban can be imposed only by the Federal Constitutional Court. The present disclosures do not themselves establish the legal conditions necessary for such a decision.
Questions over authenticity and data protection
The scale of the archive introduces further complications.
The material reportedly contains bank statements, membership records, personal correspondence and other confidential information involving thousands of individuals.
Journalists have verified portions of the correspondence by comparing messages with independently retained originals. Handelsblatt’s examination, for example, identified previously exchanged emails whose contents matched records held by its own reporters.
However, verification of individual communications does not establish the authenticity of every document in the archive. Fabricated messages have also circulated online.
In an official statement on 21 October, the AfD described the breach as criminal data theft and said it would not authenticate individual documents for journalists.
The party has also reported the incident to the authorities.
For Germany’s political institutions, the affair now presents several distinct questions: whether historical campaign finance arrangements were accurately disclosed, what the correspondence reveals about the party’s internal decision-making, and whether any of the documents provide evidence relevant to ongoing constitutional scrutiny.
Those questions remain open as investigators and journalists continue examining the archive.
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