The authorities carried out raids in three federal states.
The goal: to smash an international money laundering network.
So far, the police have arrested 11 suspects.
Düsseldorf / Munich - More than a thousand officials searched over 80 apartments, houses and business premises in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Bremen in the early hours of the morning on October 6.
The police followed up on suspicions of internationally organized money laundering and confiscated extensive evidence and assets worth a total of over two million euros, including luxury cars, high-quality watches, gold and jewelry.
Eleven suspects were taken into custody.
According to the Dusseldorf police, several deployment hun- dreds as well as drug and money detection dogs were involved in the raids.
Raid in three federal states on suspicion of money laundering
According to the information, the large-scale operation was directed against 67 alleged members of an international network that has been operating since 2016. As part of a widely ramified network of flows of goods and money, they are said to have provided unauthorized payment services and laundered funds from criminal offenses. According to a preliminary estimate, the transaction volume in the investigation period is around 140 million euros.
But not only the suspicion of money laundering is in the room, the public prosecutor's office also accuses the suspects of criminal offenses such as armed robbery and hostage-taking, which were committed to collect existing and alleged claims.
There are also allegations in the room of wrongly receiving social benefits, of not complying with social security and tax obligations and of helping each other to conceal this.
Raid in North Rhine-Westphalia: The accused is said to be a member of a terrorist organization
According to the police, an arrest warrant was carried out against one of the accused, a 39-year-old Syrian national living in North Rhine-Westphalia, on suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization abroad.
The man is suspected of having joined the Jabhat al-Nusra group in Syria in 2013 and led a task force.
Even if the raids began in the early hours of the morning, the authorities are still active in some cities at the moment.
