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Scene of a raid: Ministry of Finance in Berlin
Photo: Jürgen Ritter / imago images
After the raid on the Ministry of Finance and Justice, the Osnabrück public prosecutor's office defended its approach. A spokesman for the investigative authority told SPIEGEL that they searched "at the earliest possible point in time" and thus followed the rules. The search warrant for the Ministry of Justice was only issued on August 25. The decision for the finance department is dated August 10th. Search warrants are generally valid for six months. It is not uncommon for them to be carried out weeks later.
The action on Thursday in Berlin had a huge echo because it was about the authority of the SPD candidate for chancellor and finance minister Olaf Scholz.
In two and a half weeks the general election is, Scholz is clearly ahead in the polls.
The public prosecutor's spokesman emphasized that political reasons "played no role" in the searches.
Scholz had accused the investigators of excessive action.
The prosecution would have had a few questions for his ministry.
"That could have been put in writing," Scholz told ARD.
The Cologne criminal lawyer Nikolaos Gazeas also told SPIEGEL: "The search must be seen as a clear sign of mistrust of those responsible in the two ministries." With an authority, such a means is only used if "the required documents and information are available have not previously been published voluntarily or in full «. The spokesman for the Osnabrück public prosecutor said: "We have to work with searches and seizures, not with calls and letters."
According to SPIEGEL information, the responsible public prosecutor called the Federal Ministry of Justice before the search and inquired about the documents they were looking for. There they appeared to be cooperative and asked for the request to be made in writing. However, the investigators decided to search the ministry. "Our trust is not that great," says the public prosecutor's spokesman, "that we believe that they will give everything to us voluntarily." Actually, they wanted to search the federal ministries on Tuesday. But that was not possible because of the rail strike.
The background is an investigation against unnamed employees of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), a special force of the customs against money laundering, which is subordinate to the Ministry of Finance.
It is about the suspicion of thwarting punishment in office.
The FIU is said to have not properly forwarded money laundering suspicion reports from banks "amounting to millions" to law enforcement authorities.
Therefore, it was impossible for the police and prosecutors to stop suspicious cash flows.
The process has been running since the beginning of 2020, the FIU offices in Cologne searched the investigators as early as summer 2020. The spokesman from Osnabrück said that the raid in Berlin was also about identifying responsible persons.
"We have to see if there is someone in the ministry who knew that the FIU would not be able to do its job."
But it is already clear: "We have found crucial things." He did not want to give details.
From the Federal Criminal Police Office to Customs
In the summer of 2017, the FIU was transferred from the Federal Criminal Police Office to customs against the concerns of many experts.
The then Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) was responsible for this.
The troop is supposed to filter reports of suspected money laundering nationwide in order to relieve criminal prosecutors.
In the opinion of many experts, however, she was overwhelmed with her task from the start, so she lacked expertise, personnel, equipment, and information.
There is also great resentment in the federal states.
The Lower Saxony Minister of Justice Barbara Havliza (CDU) recently criticized that the authority was concentrating "above all on data collection."
You fail to send important information "in a timely and complete manner" to investigators.
"Ultimately, the FIU lacks the instinct to persecute."
