More and more illegally generated money is being invested in the German real estate market. "According to estimates, it was more than 30 billion euros in 2017 alone," says a study by Transparency International. These are increasingly foreign money whose origin is unclear.
Evidence from investigators in Italy show that especially Mafia members want to purse enormous sums of money by the real estate acquisition in Germany. Among other things, they are from the cocaine trade.
"There is a massive money laundering problem with real estate in Germany," says Transparency Germany boss Edda Müller. "The existing laws and the equipment of the investigative authorities are out of all proportion to the boundlessness of international financial flows." The finance expert of the left-wing parliamentary group, Fabio de Masi, told the news agency dpa that there was an enormous dark field here. "Especially notaries are required to report suspected cases as well."
Brokers and notaries are part of the problem
Simply because of its size, the German real estate market offers a huge potential for money laundering, according to the study. It is unknown how many properties and plots belong to foreign legal entities. An existing transparency register has too many loopholes. Brokers and notaries would report practically no cases and thus hardly contribute to the fight against money laundering, Müller criticized. Of just under 60,000 suspicious transaction reports in 2017, only about 20 were from real estate agents.
Mailbox companies often obscure the true backers and the source of the money. The government wants to counteract with an increase of the "Financial Intelligence Unit" (FIU) of the customs on up to 475 coworkers. But at the FIU there has been massive criticism for some time. Investigators and other officials spoke of a fiasco this summer that the FIU was "blind and deaf."
According to SPIEGEL research, suspicions remain undeclared for information from banks too long, the equipment with staff and IT is inadequate, access to important databases of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) does not exist (read more here). Often, police and prosecutors are informed too late - and if so, investigators can do little with the information.