Six days before the Bundestag election, the SPD Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz had to change his plans at short notice: Instead of speaking in Tübingen and Nürtingen, he visited the Bundestag Finance Committee - just as the members of the opposition and the Union had requested.
Originally, Scholz only wanted to be connected, but then came in person.
The subject was the investigation by the Osnabrück public prosecutor's office against employees of the anti-money laundering unit FIU, in the course of which the Federal Ministries of Finance and Justice were also searched the Thursday before last.
Manfred Schäfers
Business correspondent in Berlin.
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In the closed session, the minister is said to have described his position and the situation very fundamentally for around 40 minutes. He emphasized that the fight against money laundering was a priority for him and that German engagement was recognized internationally, it was reported from among the members of the parliament. According to the information, the SPD politician pointed out that his predecessor Wolfgang Schäuble and Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (both CDU) had ensured that the FIU had been relocated from the area of the Federal Criminal Police Office to customs. After there were start-up problems in the period that followed, he increased the staff there and strengthened the department responsible. But one has difficulties in attracting the necessary specialists.At the beginning there were significant problems with the processing of the suspicious transaction reports, but these were reduced in the course of 2018. In addition, Scholz explained the risk-based approach in the processing of reports of suspected money laundering. According to a report by the broadcaster SWR, the Federal Ministry of Justice is said to have assessed this approach critically. The procedure was "legally extremely questionable," the broadcaster quoted from a letter from May.
According to the SPD politician, the public prosecutor's office is investigating seven cases in which the FIU is said to have failed to perform its duties. No FIU employee is currently being accused of anything, he emphasized. The public prosecutor's office is investigating an unknown person. In this context, the searches "of third parties" in the two ministries had taken place, with five electronic e-mail boxes confiscated in his house. Scholz is said to have emphasized that the public prosecutor had not previously contacted the Federal Ministry of Finance by phone or in writing. He is said to have responded evasively to the question of how he judged their approach based on the rule of law.
During the question and answer session, the minister confessed that he had never spoken personally to the head of the FIU. This caused great astonishment among the MPs, said the CDU politician Sepp Müller afterwards. For the representative from Saxony-Anhalt, Scholz's answer allows conclusions to be drawn about his priorities in the fight against money laundering crime. He also recalled the criticism of the FIU by some state ministers of justice. Thereafter, only coordinating working groups were convened. The finance politician complained that Scholz was unable to make any statements about possible interim results of these working groups.
Lisa Paus, financial policy spokeswoman for the Greens, sharply criticized the minister. "Instead of contributing to the clarification and real error analysis, Olaf Scholz used today's meeting for his self-portrayal." As finance minister, he had rejected all responsibility for the chaos at the anti-money laundering authority FIU and the fight against money laundering. "It is precisely this organized irresponsibility that is the central problem in combating money laundering in Germany," said Paus. Scholz did not do enough to fight money laundering: "The chaos at the FIU was not stopped, and Germany is still a money laundering swamp."
FDP parliamentary group vice Christian Dürr spoke with a view to the cum-ex tax affair and the Wirecard fraud case of the third financial scandal in which Scholz was involved. At the same time it is now "the third time that Mr. Scholz refuses to take a concrete position". The left-wing politician Stefan Liebich wrote cautiously on the short message service Twitter that there were "open questions", but "no reason for silly election spectacle". The SPD committee member Jens Zimmermann said that Schäuble had "left a pile of broken glass" for the finance minister in the fight against money laundering.