Action against organized crime in the red light district in Kiel (May 2022)
Photo: Markus Scholz/dpa
The economic damage caused by organized crime in Germany has more than doubled recently.
It rose from 837 million euros in 2020 to 2.2 billion euros last year.
This emerges from the published national situation report on organized crime by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
In the previous year, this value was around one billion euros.
According to the BKA, the increasing numbers illustrate the financial potential of organized crime groups and "the associated threat to a wide variety of areas of society", for example through reinvestment of money in legal and illegal business models or through corruption.
The BKA report examines, among other things, criminal activities in the rocker milieu, in clans and Italian and Russian-Eurasian groups.
The number of preliminary investigations also increased last year – by around 17 percent to 696 investigations.
According to the BKA, the increase is mainly due to the decryption of telecommunications.
Most of the procedures were in North Rhine-Westphalia, followed by Lower Saxony and Bavaria.
Number of armed perpetrators increased by more than a third
The federal situation report on organized crime recorded a further significant increase in suspects.
Their total number increased by almost 15 percent to around 7,500.
559 suspects were armed.
Their number rose by almost 35 percent.
The organized gangs were reportedly mainly active in drug trafficking and smuggling.
Almost half of all investigations fall into this area.
This is followed by economic crimes and so-called property crime, including burglaries and thefts.
According to the BKA, the fact that the number of fraud offenses has risen sharply in the past year shows how quickly some criminal gangs react to new opportunities to commit crimes.
The number of procedures in which connections to the corona pandemic were identified tripled in 2021 compared to the previous year.
"This increase is largely due to the unlawful application for and use of emergency corona aid from the federal government," says the situation report presented by BKA President Holger Münch in Berlin together with Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD).
Overall, organized crime continues to pose “a high potential for damage and threats” to society and to economic and state institutions, the report summarizes.
ala/dpa/AFP
