BERLIN, April 2 (UPI) -- Germany's far-right National Democratic Party, or NPD, the political home of many neo-Nazis, is on the verge of collapse because of a $2.9 million fine.
The federal prosecutor's office recently sent the NPD the fine because of severe tax violations, the Berliner Zeitung reports.
The NPD has been in money trouble for years after a former party official diverted nearly $1 million from the NPD's accounts; the German Parliament recently also cut the party's subsidies, causing it to lose roughly $100,000 a month.
The fine, which the NPD is set to appeal, may mean the end of a party that the German government has tried to outlaw for quite some time.
In 2003, Germany's Supreme Court threw out a government case against the NPD, arguing that police informers who had infiltrated the party possibly tainted testimony against the party.
The Verfassungsschutz, a domestic intelligence agency, estimates the number of far-right extremists and neo-Nazis in Germany at some 31,000. Roughly 7,200 of them are organized within the NPD, a far-right group that because of its anti-constitutional tendencies is monitored by the Verfassungsschutz.
