You can't make this up: the farce of banning German right-wing NPD

A coalition of German states is trying once again to have the right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD) banned by Germany's highest court.

Since 2000, there have been a grand total of three attempts to outlaw the NPD. The party is your regular German far right bunch with all the accoutrements this entails. They hate immigrants unless they are good white European ones, many still believe that the Third Reich had its good sides - you get the picture.

Wikipedia says: Since its founding in 1964, the NPD has never managed to win enough votes on the federal level to cross Germany's 5% minimum threshold for representation in the Bundestag; it has succeeded in crossing the 5% threshold and gaining representation in state parliaments 11 times, including the current parliament in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The NPD has been consistently monitored by the German domestic spy services, both federal and state level ones ("Office for the protection of the constitution" is our best translation of these agencies).

This post does not delve into whether banning the NPD is justified or not, or whether it is an attempt to demonstrate action against the extreme right after the domestic spy agencies failed miserably for a good ten years to help resolve a string of murders by the neo-Nazi NSU.

The subject today is the use of informants and the view of the constitutional court.

In 2003, the court rejected the request for a ban when it turned out the domestic spy agencies had top level informants inside the NPD but failed to inform the court of this.

Fast forward to the current attempt to ban the NPD.

Today, the German press reports that the domestic spies had 11 informants in the national and state leadership organizations of the party until early 2012 when the relationships were "terminated" by officials prior to filing again for a ban.

There is no information about lower level informants.
Are there any?
How much are informants paid?

We know that one informant close to the murderous NSU was paid around 100 K, for example, some of which he promptly used to support extreme right causes.

No matter whether the NPD is eventually banned or not, the farce around informants is bound to continue.

Because informants are likely to be used again either way.

If a ban comes, the party becomes illegal and hence a clear target for use of informants.

If the ban falls through, informants can be re-activated unless the court expressly forbids their use. Which is unlikely given that, for example, the left party Die Linke has been actively monitored by the domestic spies.

You can't make this up, right?