German spy suspect disappears from EU lobbying register

Gerhard Sabathil no longer listed as having European Parliament accreditation.

The ex-diplomat suspected by German prosecutors of spying for China has been removed from a list of lobbyists in the EU’s Transparency Register.

Gerhard Sabathil, who has denied the allegations against him, worked for decades for the European Commission and the EU’s diplomatic corps before moving to lobbying firm EUTOP in 2017.

Sabathil had been listed in EUTOP’s entry in the Transparency Register as a person accredited for access to the European Parliament premises. But his entry disappeared last week, as publicity around the allegations against him grew.

Sabathil’s absence from the Transparency Register was first recorded on Wednesday, January 22, according to Corporate Europe Observatory, a group that co-runs LobbyFacts.eu — a website which scrapes the Transparency Register daily for updates.

Neither EUTOP nor the European Parliament answered questions from POLITICO on why and when Sabathil had been removed from the register.

The former German diplomat’s profile was also removed from EUTOP’s website last week and the company has declined to say whether it still employed him. He had previously been listed as managing director of EUTOP’s Brussels and Berlin offices.

Sabathil himself has not commented publicly since the allegations against him surfaced two weeks ago. His denials came through his employer and a German lawyer.

The EU Transparency Register is a database jointly run by the European Parliament and the Commission, which tracks organizations registered to lobby the EU institutions and their accredited lobbyists.

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