An investigation identified Andreas Maul, a town councillor for Germany’s far-right AfD party, as the man behind a Serbian company sanctioned for aiding a Russian alleged cybercrime service provider.
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The company, Aeza Group, was sanctioned by the US in July last year for allegedly providing infrastructure for cybercrime groups involved in ransomware, personal information theft and the drug trade.
A year earlier, the German investigative media outlet CORRECTIV, based on an analysis by the Swedish digital forensics NGO Qurium, reported that Aeza Group had supported a wide-ranging, ongoing Russian covert influence and disinformation campaign launched after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and known as ‘Doppelganger".
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Maul was born in the Kazakh city of Rudny, near the Central Asian state’s northern border with Russia.
On his private TikTok and Telegram profiles, Maul goes by the name Андрей, or Andrej.
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Maul holds a German passport and lives in Selm, where he runs two companies – cleaning firm Maul Services UG, opened in 2018, and the business consultancy PHRIS Consulting, registered in January 2021. Both are registered at Maul’s residential address.
On the official website of the Selm local authority, Maul is listed as a member of several committees of the Selm local assembly since November 13, 2025. On a Facebook page of the local AfD branch, Maul is shown at an AfD event in Selm in May this year inviting people to register as stem cell donors.
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