Michael Ballweg

Michael Ballweg   (COVID-19/Resistance)
Born	23. November 1974 Wertheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Nationality	German
Organizer of some highly successful German protests against Covid. The government put him in custody for 9 months, then released him without charges.

Michael Ballweg is a German businessman from Stuttgart. Since March 2020, he organized some highly successful protests against Covid, first in Stuttgart, then also in Berlin and other German cities. In June 2022, he was then arrested on bogus charges of fraud, put in a high-security prison for 9 months, before being released without any charges.

Activities

From 18 April 2020, Ballweg began with "vigils for the Constitution" in Stuttgart. From April 22, he called his initiative "Querdenken711". A website of the same name created by his wife went online on April 23. In addition, he called for demonstrations against restrictions on civil rights in Stuttgart every Saturday. He mocked the social distancing rule. During interview requests from journalists, Ballweg demanded a signed statement to "report truthfully, impartially and completely" and not to practice censorship. He justified this with an "distorted reporting in ARD, SWR and ZEIT online", so he refused to be interviewed by these outlets, in favor of independent media.

On May 9, 2020, Ballweg had Ken Jebsen as the keynote speaker. He described how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had "hijacked German democracy" through the World Health Organization. The demonstration summoned a cross-section from left and right of all political parties. Ballweg said anyone could take part in a demonstration, thus notably refusing to exclude the right-wing AfD, which the large parties had tried to build a cordon sanitaire around. Ballweg said right-wing, fascist, inhuman as well as left-wing extremist ideas have no place in the movement.

Ballweg was one of the organizers of some big demonstrations in Berlin, including on August 29, 2020, in a large degree contributing to their success.

In June 2020, Ballweg announced that he would stand as a non-partisan candidate in the election of the mayor of Stuttgart. In the main election on November 8, 2020, he received 2.6%, in the decisive by-election on November 29, 2020, he then received 1.2% of the valid votes.

Querdenker and Reichsbürger

A Querdenker secret strategy ion November 15, 2020 in Saalfeld was attended by the self-proclaimed "King of Germany" Peter Fitzek. Fitzek has been under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution for years. He has been in prison several times for embezzling large sums of money and acts as a kind of "hub" for the Reichsbürger scene in Germany - even if he does not see himself as a Reichsbürger. According to Aya Velázquez, "Fitzek serves as a honey pot": anyone who goes in and out of his house ends up in the sights of the intelligence agency himself." Thus the attendance of Fitzek gave the spooks the pretext to focus on the movement. Velázquez herself ended up being surveilled because she reported on two defectors from the Querdenker-movement. She also theorizes that the Querdenker-movement itself might have been a way to derail opposition to Covid.

Prosecution and dropping of the case

In June 2022, the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor's Office arrested him on bogus charges of fraud and money laundering and initiated criminal proceedings against him. Ballweg was said to have used 640,000 euros inappropriately and "laundered" 430,000 euros, money that Ballweg had collected during Covid for protests of the Querdenker ("lateral thinking") movement, for private purposes. The accusation was since reduced to a 146,000 euro loan allegedly for personal purposes, and reduced to attempted fraud instead of committed fraud.

Ballweg was put in Stammheim, the high security prison were the Baader-Meinhof previously had been incarcerated, and held there for 9 months.

Ralf Ludwig, Ballweg's lawyer, replied to the charges: "It's a political process, it's about silencing critics. What previously Russia, Turkey and similar states were accused of doing, is now happening in the Federal Republic of Germany. This step towards totalitarianism is continuing."

In March 2023, all money laundering allegations against Ballweg were dropped. The government on purpose stalled the process, in order to leave Ballweg in detention as long as possible.

As of October 2023, Ballweg said

My entire fortune is still confiscated. They completely ripped me out of my house. It was sold while I was in prison. The proceeds of the sale were also confiscated. My companies as well. They are to this day. And so that I don't get back on my feet so quickly, the tax office has also took out a lien on my bank account. The tax office also seems to have a sense of humor, it sent me a payroll tax receipt for 15,000 euros exactly for the period in which I was in prison.

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