Exclusive
Status: 05.10.2021 05:05
Whatever the form of the new federal government – there is a great need for action when it comes to combating money laundering. Because the deficits that exist with the competent authority are, according to research by BR and mirrors continue immensely.
By Arne Meyer-Fünffinger, ARD capital studio
A few days before the federal election, Olaf Scholz defended the federal anti-money laundering agency, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU): “We have achieved more in the last three years than in the last 30 years.”
The Federal Minister of Finance had just come from a special meeting of the finance committee that lasted several hours. The committee had summoned Scholz after the Osnabrück public prosecutor’s office had searched the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Federal Ministry of Justice at the beginning of September. She has been investigating previously unknown FIU officials since July last year.
A national investigation at the Osnabrück public prosecutor’s office
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the FIU “did not forward money laundering reports produced by banks in the millions (…) to the police and the judiciary” in June 2018. And that although the background to these financial transactions could have been “arms and drug trafficking as well as terrorist financing”. The charge: thwarting punishment in office.
A survey by BR research and the “Spiegel” among the federal ministries of justice and general public prosecutor’s offices in the federal states shows: The investigation by the Osnabrück public prosecutor’s office is the only one in Germany that is directed against unknown FIU officials.
In February of this year, the Cologne Public Prosecutor’s Office received an anonymous complaint against those responsible for the FIU, also on suspicion of obstruction of punishment in the office. According to a spokesman for the criminal investigation authority, however, it decided not to initiate investigative proceedings – “in the absence of initial suspicion”.
According to their own statements, customs also have no knowledge of further procedures. The FIU, based in Cologne, is located at customs and is under the legal supervision of the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Federal states are sharply critical
Unlike Scholz, several federal states continue to view the work of the FIU critically. “The fact that the FIU forwards money laundering reports late or not at all despite their criminal relevance is a regular occurrence (…). In the course of time there has not been any significant improvement,” the Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office concluded.
The ministries of justice and public prosecutor’s offices in Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony and Thuringia also reported BR and “mirror” of belatedly forwarded money laundering reports by the FIU. “In the past, even urgent reports of suspected money laundering were either not forwarded to the Saxon public prosecutor’s offices, or at least only too late. However, there is no statistical recording of these cases,” said the Dresden Public Prosecutor’s Office on request. Other countries say they have no statistical surveys either.
Bavaria: Suspicious transfers could not be stopped
The Ministry of Justice of Bavaria shared BR and “Spiegel” with, in the past it happened “that urgent indications of suspicious, imminent transactions were presented by the FIU very shortly before the deadline or only after the deadline. In these cases the public prosecutor either hardly had time to issue a final prohibition to check the transaction, or the transaction had already been carried out in the meantime because the deadline had expired “. However, deadline cases “are now usually submitted on time,” the ministry said.
Particularly fierce criticism of the FIU comes from Lower Saxony. The Ministry of Justice in Hanover speaks of an “increasingly deficient forwarding practice”, which has been recognized as a problem since 2019 at the latest: “In view of the discrepancy between suspicious activity reports received by the FIU and the forwarding of the FIU to the Lower Saxony public prosecutor’s offices, there was / is a real risk that those in need of urgency existed Money laundering reports have not been / will not be forwarded to law enforcement authorities. ”
The number of suspicious transaction reports has risen sharply
In recent years, the number of reports that banks have sent to the FIU, for example, has risen sharply. According to customs information, almost 145,000 suspicious transaction reports for money laundering landed there in 2020. The federal government has repeatedly had to admit that tens of thousands of these reports were piled up at the unit.
For this reason, among other things, the Justice Ministers’ Conference in November 2020 identified “serious deficits in cooperation with the law enforcement authorities”.
Criticism also from the Bundestag
“Human trafficking, corruption and other serious forms of crime only work with money laundering. That is why it must be and remain a key in the fight against crime,” says Sebastian Fiedler, chairman of the Association of German Criminal Investigators. In the future, Fiedler will deal with the subject of money laundering as an SPD member of the Bundestag.
Markus Herbrand, chairman of the FDP parliamentary group in the finance committee, speaks of a “miserable performance” that the FIU delivered. In his opinion, politics is primarily responsible for this: “It is completely incomprehensible why the Federal Government has for years delayed, ignored and covered up the serious grievances at the anti-money laundering authority FIU.” That is why the next federal government must pull the rip cord at the problem authority of customs and initiate fundamental improvements.