According to the AfD, the Berlin public prosecutor's office searched the party's federal office on Wednesday. It should therefore go to an investigation against the former party leader Jörg Meuthen.

According to matching information from "Spiegel" and ZDF, the search is related to possibly illegal party financing.

According to AfD co-boss Tino Chrupalla, the authorities copied hard drives, mailboxes and file folders. He criticized that the public prosecutor's office had not previously asked for the release of the data.

A spokesman for the Berlin public prosecutor's office initially did not want to confirm the raid when asked by stern, but announced further information for the course of the day.

In a statement, the AfD leadership criticized the actions of the investigators. Co-party leader Alice Weidel called it an "extremely unusual and extremely disproportionate measure to intimidate the AfD as the most important opposition party".

More on that shortly here.

Sources: Berlin public prosecutor, AfD, "Spiegel", ZDF, news agencies DPA and AFP