German prosecutors have launched an investigation into the top candidate from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Berlin’s upcoming regional elections, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday, less than two weeks before Berliners are due to elect a new state government.<\/p>\n
Three premises related to Steffen Krach in Berlin and the northern city of Hanover have been searched, the spokeswoman told dpa.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors declined to comment on the exact nature of the accusations.<\/p>\n
The local Tagesspiegel daily reported that Krach’s flat in Berlin, as well as the SPD regional headquarters were raided.<\/p>\n
Authorities in Hanover, where Krach currently still serves as the top regional administrative official, confirmed that his offices in the city have also been searched.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Krach rejected the accusations against him as “baseless,” and said he was fully cooperating with the authorities to dispel the allegations.<\/p>\n
The investigation could not come at a worse time for Krach and his SPD, which is polling at a mere 11% ahead of the vote on September 20.<\/p>\n
The party, which is part of the incumbent governing coalition both in Berlin and at national level, has been seeing its worst approval ratings in decades.<\/p>\n
The elections in Berlin will be closely watched, particularly in light of last week’s vote in Saxony-Anhalt which was overwhelmingly won by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), with the populist, anti-immigrant party also expected to make huge gains in Berlin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German prosecutors have launched an investigation into the top candidate from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Berlin’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,190,65708,4876,16112,16117,76334],"class_list":["post-163412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-germany","tag-regional-elections","tag-social-democratic-party","tag-social-democrats","tag-spd","tag-steffen-krach"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117243901601011743","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}