The German elections are approaching, and lo and behold, the skeletons keep falling out of the closet. Last Thursday morning, people from the Lower Saxony State Prosecutor's Office occupied the building of the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice.
A house search was conducted in a so far unsolved money laundering case. Both ministries are controlled by the Social Democrats, and the finance ministry is controlled by SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz . The former mayor of Hamburg belongs to the conservative wing of the socialists, so he is an acceptable figure among the undecided and CDU voters. If the elections were held now, the SPD led by Scholz would be the runner-up , and let's face it, the party's progress is due to the person of Olaf Scholz.
It's about time to come up with a scandal that will dampen the rising wings of the socialists. The case in which the prosecutor's office is investigating is not recent, the threads go back to 2018. Three years ago (!), a Hanover bank found the money movement of one of its customers suspicious and fulfilled its legal obligation to report it to the competent authority. It was about the transfer of more than one and a half million euros to Africa, and it was suspected that the background of the transfer could be the financing of terrorism, arms and drug trafficking. The bank made the announcement to the special financial intelligence agency, the national FIU (Financial Intelligence Unit).
The FIU is a European Union agency created to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, similar to the border protection agency Frontex. There is a FIU in all member countries, also in Hungary, where it is connected to NAV. The Germans placed the office under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance a few years ago, and significantly increased its staff and IT equipment. It is the FIU's job to check all reports with German thoroughness, carry out a risk analysis, and then forward suspicious cases to the investigative bodies. The office prepares enviable reports decorated with graphs and colorful figures, but somehow forgets to forward the suspicious cases after the analysis. This is certainly a failure of official duty, an act to be punished, and now the investigation has finally started against officials with no name. In our case, we are talking about complex terrorist financing running on several threads, which the FIU did not forward, thereby delaying the investigation of the case. It is not known whether it was intentional or simple negligence, and there are no specific persons responsible for the time being, only suspects.
In any case, the political responsibility rests with the head of the relevant ministry, the socialist candidate for chancellor Scholz. "How good it is that we once again managed to prove the existence of the rule of law!" said the minister, since a provincial prosecutor's office could order an investigation of a federal ministry. And he gave a small lecture about the developments he had made in that area during his ministry. He improvised a nice Swedish campaign speech, and threw the ball in the neck of his current coalition partner, because lo and behold, despite eight years of cooperation, they are now attacking below the belt.
At the end of the election campaign, the suspicion of political discrediting always arises. Which party is in the interest of blackmailing chancellor candidate Scholz? According to Berlin circles, the CDU, because the Lower Saxony Ministry of Justice, which ordered the house search, belongs to the CDU, and the state prosecutor in Osnabrück was a CDU man for years. They have no other topic, Scholz says of his Christian Democratic opponent, only this FIU case. (And it could even be the Wirecard scandal that broke out last year, the threads of which also ran to the Scholz-led ministry.)
The other parties, namely the Greens, the Linke and the Free Democrats (FDP), requested the immediate convening of the parliamentary finance committee, even before the elections. It's a real call for a corpse, they want to corner the political rival because they found a way around him. Anyway, in Germany it is mainly the Greens who push for the investigation of corruption and money laundering cases. In the Ministry of Finance in Baden-Württemberg, where they hold the portfolio, they have opened a so-called "tax fraud portal", and they want to introduce it in all the states.
Citizens can file an anonymous report against their neighbor or anyone, in a janitor-like manner reminiscent of the old brown and red times. All that is needed is that a tax evader, corrupt person, thief, etc. name them, and they are seeds of distrust between people. What else can we expect, the CSU asks, if the Greens get into government? Will we become a country of whistleblowers and whistleblowers?
God forbid, the press knew about the ministry's house search before the authorities did. They launched the action that started as a discreet inspection: since only two dozen people in civilian clothes walked into the ministry building during working hours. Where and how did the press workers get the information? There is also the question of whether a house search was necessary at all, since the authorities could have obtained the necessary documents in other ways.
Every miracle lasts three days, even in Germany. The news rang out as it came. It would not hurt to deal with it, because - and here I quote the commentators of the very left-wing Süddeutsche Zeitung and Spiegel: "Germany has a structural money laundering problem; it is too easy for criminals to launder their ill-gotten gains in this country.” "Germany is considered a paradise for criminals, where money from dirty deals can be laundered. And if the criminals are caught and convicted, they almost always get to keep the loot.”
Source: Magyar Hírlap
Author: Irén Rab
(On the cover photo: Olaf Scholz. Source: MTI/EPA pool/Clemens Bilan )
