Solingen/Dusseldorf – In a nationwide raid against criminal members of the Al-Zein clan, the police are currently searching 50 properties in North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin and Lower Saxony.
Hundreds of officers stormed the building before dawn, and there are arrest warrants for eight suspects.
The accusation: commercial gang stolen goods and forgery of documents as well as fraud in Corona emergency aid.
Sniffer dogs were also used
The focus of the raid with many hundreds is North Rhine-Westphalia, in Solingen and Düsseldorf alone there are eight hits, but the investigators also grabbed in the Ruhr area (Bochum, Dortmund). The operation is managed by the special unit “ZeOS” (central and contact point for the prosecution of organized crime) of the Düsseldorf public prosecutor’s office.
The background to the large-scale operation is a brazen scam by the Al Zeins: the clan members are said to have rented expensive leasing vehicles on a large scale from bogus companies and then illegally resold them with forged papers.
This is another blow to clan organized crime. Tax investigators are also on duty, and assets of the clan members in the millions are to be siphoned off today in the raid, and expensive valuables are to be confiscated.
The Al-Zein clan always makes headlines. Relatives are currently on trial in Düsseldorf whose villa in Leverkusen is said to have been paid for with money from the job center. A few days ago, the public prosecutor had demanded a six-year prison sentence for the clan boss. The verdicts are to be spoken on December 22nd.