A parliamentary aide to Dutch Forum for Democracy (FvD) lawmaker Marcel de Graaff was the subject of a raid on his Brussels residences Wednesday morning as Belgian authorities conducted searches of his EU Parliament office in Strasbourg.
The Belgian Public Prosecutor’s Office defended their actions as being motivated by an alleged Russian influence operation through the ‘Voice of Europe’ platform, with Czech and Belgian authorities previously claiming that the website acted as a conduit for Kremlin money.
The parliamentary assistant was named in the press as Guillaume Pradoura, a French national who had previously worked with the French RN and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) MEP Maximilian Krah. Pradoura was only made aware of the twin raids through the media and has not been charged with any crime.
De Graaf, a leading critic of EU and NATO support of Ukraine, expressed confusion as to why he and his aide learned of the matter by the media and said Wednesday’s raids were “mainly aimed at the AfD for fear of a good election result.”
FvD leader Thiery Baudet specifically distanced himself from Pradoura when speaking to the press last month, with the French-born parliamentary assistant already under scrutiny from French intelligence services for alleged Russian ties.
Despite a string of corruption and foreign influence scandals against socialist MEPs that appear to be languishing or ignored, the European Commission has been quick to publicize and crack down on allegations of Russian meddling in Brussels, with the Voice of Europe website placed under official sanctions earlier this month despite no public evidence having been presented against it.
Wednesday’s raids come after the high-profile arrest of AfD parliamentary aide Jian Guo on claims that he was spying for China. Petr Bystron (AfD), a German MP, found himself the subject of a similar police raid this month over allegations that he received a €20.000 bribe from a Kremlin-adjacent oligarch.
Fresh from better-than-expected regional election results, the AfD has been the target of relentless harassment from German intelligence services as the increasingly right-wing party is expected to grow its number of MEPs significantly next month.
Pradoura was contacted before publication and did not wish to comment.
