German police on Thursday searched the offices of the Ministries of Finance and Justice in Berlin in connection with an investigation into money laundering, the prosecutor’s office said.
The investigation against the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), the anti-money laundering unit of the German customs service, was revealed by the prosecutor’s office in Osnabrück.
Authorities in Osnabrück have been investigating the Financial Intelligence Unit since February 2020 in connection with allegations that the FIU has not passed on reports to the police from banks about possible money laundering.
“An evaluation of the documents obtained from the previous FIU searches revealed extensive communication between the FIU and the ministries now being searched,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors now want to find out if a criminal offense has taken place and, if so, who is responsible.
The Ministry of Finance stated that it fully supported the authorities in the investigation and stressed that the investigation was not directed against the Ministry’s staff.
FIU used to be a police unit, but in 2017 it was transferred to the German customs service and supervised by the Ministry of Finance.
The Ministry of Finance is headed by Olaf Scholz, who has been nominated by the Social Democrats (SPD) as chancellor in the upcoming Bundestag elections on 26 September.
Prosecutors in Osnabrück launched an investigation when it was revealed that the FIU had not forwarded a report from the bank about a suspicious payment of more than one million euros sent to Africa in 2018.
The FIU has also been charged with withholding information in the Wirecard case. Wirecard was considered a thriving German financial technology company until it collapsed last year as a result of a huge fraud scandal.
The FIU did not pass on hundreds of reports of suspicious transactions at the company to the authorities, the Handelsblatt reported in August.
Wirecard went bankrupt last year, acknowledging a € 1.9 billion shortfall in its accounts.
The German banking regulator Bafin, which also operates under the Ministry of Finance, was also criticized for not supervising Wirecard.
–
