BERLIN, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), vehemently rejected accusations on Friday that she was personally responsible for any misconduct in a campaign finance scandal which has engulfed her party.
Speaking to the press, Weidel said that all allegations against her were "devoid of any foundation and represented an attempt to discredit me personally and politically." The former Goldman Sachs analyst described reports that the AfD branch in her own electoral district received illicit campaign funds from Switzerland as "incorrect in key areas, incomplete and biased."
Weidel was unwilling to comment on any details of the affair until an assessment by her attorney and a statement prepared by them to the relevant German authorities on her behalf.
According to research by the public broadcasters WDR and NDR and the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), the local AfD branch in Weidel's own electoral district received around 130,000 euros (147,200 U.S. dollars) of suspicious Swiss funding in the run-up to the last federal elections. The funds were transferred from a Zuerich-based pharma company in multiple installments and were referenced as "Election campaign donation Alice Weidel".
Confronted with the accusations, Weidel said earlier that she first learned about the "unwanted" donation in September 2017. Although the AfD had "concerns about the legality" of the donation, the money was only returned in April 2018. At that time, the AfD had already entered the German parliament for the first time and received a boost to its finances as a result of the federal election.
Together with AfD co-leaders Joerg Meuthen and Alexander Gauland, Weidel is a key figure in the AfD and has become known for her frequent incendiary language in speeches about migrants. Weidel is officially registered as a Swiss taxpayer.
