Two ministries raided in money laundering case

German government fraud? The premises of the German Ministries of Justice and Finance were raided on Thursday in Berlin, as part of an investigation into “suspicions of money laundering amounting to millions of euros” having “not been transmitted to the police and the judiciary ”, announced the Osnabrück public prosecutor’s office.

Investigations are currently being carried out in Germany since February 2020 and target the Central Office for Investigation of Financial Transactions (FIU). Based in Cologne, it is responsible for combating money laundering and is placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance.

a case against the background of arms and drugs trafficking

In 2020, the FIU receives a “suspicious activity report made by a bank (…) on payments to Africa for an amount greater than one million euros”. However, this report was “not transmitted to the judicial authorities”, which prevented “the end of this payment”, according to the prosecution.

However, this transaction “had as a backdrop the trafficking of arms and drugs as well as the financing of terrorism”, indicated the bank in its report. Justice wants “to verify if and, if necessary, to what extent, the management and the persons in charge of the ministries (…) were involved in the decisions of the FIU”.

Bad timing for government number two

In a statement, the Ministry of Finance said “fully support the authorities”, affirming that these suspicions “are not expressly directed against (its) agents”. The ministry is headed by Olaf Scholz, the number two in the government currently leading the polls for the legislative elections on September 26, which must appoint Angela Merkel’s successor to the chancellery. Visibly irritated by the persecution, Olaf Scholz commented on the operation, saying that the prosecutors “could have asked him (their questions, editor’s note) in writing”, according to Die Welt.

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Opposition parties took up the case to criticize Olaf Scholz. “The chaos that reigns at the FIU has existed since the Ministry of Finance took responsibility,” accused elected environmentalists Lisa Paus and Irene Mihalic in a joint statement. Eckhardt Rehberg, of Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party, told the t-online news portal that Olaf Scholz and Christine Lambrecht, SPD Minister of Justice, “bear political responsibility for these events”.

Already last year, the deficiencies of the German financial regulation system, placed under the direction of his ministry, had been blamed in the Wirecard affair. This online payments company had to admit in June 2020 that 1.9 billion euros registered in its accounts did not exist, leading to one of the biggest financial scandals in the country’s recent history.

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