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| - German investigators have arrested a suspect in connection with the "mask affair" corruption scandal involving several politicians from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative alliance, prosecutors said Thursday. The suspect, who was not named, has been detained and investigators have seized "extensive" assets belonging to them, the public prosecutor's office in Munich said. Several politicians from Merkel's CDU-CSU alliance have been implicated in the so-called mask affair which has seen them accused of profiting directly or indirectly from coronavirus mask contracts. It is unclear if the arrested suspect is one of the lawmakers embroiled in the scandal or another individual. The prosecutors are investigating a total of five suspects in connection with the scandal, which has contributed to plummeting support for Merkel's conservatives six months before general elections. CSU lawmaker Georg Nuesslein was last month placed under investigation for corruption following accusations that he accepted around 600,000 euros ($715,000) to lobby for a mask supplier. A similar controversy embroiled CDU lawmaker Nikolas Loebel, whose company allegedly pocketed 250,000 euros in commissions for acting as an intermediary in mask contracts. Loebel gave up his mandate, while Nuesslein has left the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Bavaria's former justice minister Alfred Sauter is also under investigation and has resigned from all his posts in the CSU party. He denies all allegations against him. The affair erupted in the run-up to two key regional elections in the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate this month, with the conservatives scoring their worst ever results in both states. With the conservatives moving to clean up their ranks, MPs have since also come forward over conflicts of interest beyond the "mask affair". Mark Hauptmann, a CDU lawmaker from the eastern German state of Thuringia, gave up his mandate over accusations that he had received payments from foreign governments such as Azerbaijan to lobby for them. And Tobias Zech, a member of the Bundestag for the CSU, resigned over paid PR work allegedly carried out for a political party in Macedonia. fec/hmn/wai
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