Hundreds of investigators searched objects in Bavaria, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Hamburg. Targeted: suspected members of the Nigerian mafia. Officers arrested several men.
According to information from the dpa news agency, hundreds of police officers searched numerous objects in Bavaria, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Hamburg in a raid as part of an investigation against the Nigerian mafia. The Bavarian State Criminal Police Office, police and the Munich I public prosecutor’s office said several men were arrested against whom there were open arrest warrants.
Those arrested are suspected of being members of a criminal organization at home and abroad. During the operation, the investigators seized numerous storage media. According to the information, more than 330 forces were deployed in the operation.
The investigation is believed to be about internet fraud and money laundering. When asked by the dpa, a spokesman for the State Criminal Police Office initially did not want to comment on details.
Apparently investigating “Black Ax Confraternity”
According to information from the news agency, the investigation is directed against the “Black Ax Confraternity”. According to the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, this is a mafia-like Nigerian organization whose members are mainly active in Bavaria.
There are four such groups in total. Accordingly, each of the four “brotherhoods” has a German leadership and several regional organizational units at the level of federal states or regions around larger cities. According to the information, the “Confraternities” originally emerged from university brotherhoods that campaigned for Nigeria’s independence in the 1960s and 1970s.
Drugs, internet fraud and human trafficking
However, some of the groups later developed into mafia-like organizations. They are therefore primarily active in the areas of drug crime, internet fraud, money laundering, human trafficking and smuggling. In Nigeria there are violent conflicts between groups due to competition among themselves.
Italy is considered a European focus. There have been an increasing number of large arrests and convictions of members there in recent years, according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution report. From there, however, an “expansion and relocation of existing criminal structures” to Germany and especially to Bavaria can now be seen.