From 2017 onward, the Bundestag’s ledger shows about 1.8 million euros in penalties for various transgressions—improper donations, false reporting, or misusing parliamentary funds. The AfD accounts for roughly half, around 1.1 million euros, by far the largest share. An internal overview, cited by Welt am Sonntag and dpa, flags a prominent case of covert support from Swiss GOAL AG during AfD campaigns in 2016 and 2017, including invoices for slogans and posters and an illegal Swiss donation of nearly 400,000 euros, together with missing accountability reports; another penalty of about 108,000 euros still awaits a decision by the Bundesverwaltungsgericht after an AfD lawsuit. The other parties lag far behind: CDU about 200,000 euros, SPD around 140,000, Greens about 134,000, Die Linke about 92,000, CSU roughly 79,300, and FDP a mere bit over 2,300. The AfD argues that the heavier sanctions reflect its shorter existence and relative inexperience in handling donations, insisting that current measures are tougher—citing a six-eyes principle and extensive training.

One must marvel at the melodrama of it all, as if money were the true engine of politics and virtue merely a decorative trim. The AfD, cast as the principal offender by the arithmetic of this ledger, offers a coquettish whine about being new to the game—as if length of tenure inoculates a party against misdeeds or incompetence. They tout a six-eyes principle and training as if a few seminars can purify a bloodstream that has learned to drink from the trough of public funds. And yet the real spectacle is not the alleged sins themselves, but the theater in which a party can pretend that stricter rules are the great novelty, while the rest of the ledger behaves like dutiful background music—present, quiet, and easily overlooked. If GOAL AG’s asserted involvement in 2016–2017 indeed colors the story, it merely confirms what the good society already suspects: in politics, money bends perception and headlines bend policy; oversight is not a shield but a conversation—one that must be relentless, unromantic, and, frankly, more severe than a few six-eyes and a training manual. Until the system stops treating penalties as a performance prop and treats accountability as an absolute, the public will keep paying the true price—the erosion of trust in those who pretend to govern.