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Police operation (symbolic image)
Photo: K. Schmitt / Fotostand / IMAGO
In Duisburg, emergency services have searched restaurants, gambling halls, betting shops, tea rooms and shisha bars. The large-scale operation was directed "against rockers and criminal clan members," the Duisburg police said.
The focus of the operation was therefore in the inspection of several catering establishments and a betting shop on Hamborn's Altmarkt. There, customs officials seized three kilos of untaxed tobacco. On the market square, the police searched a car of a 25-year-old and found a "forbidden one-handed knife" and a live, loaded firearm. The weapons were seized, a criminal complaint was filed against the man.
Investigations into illegal gambling
In a restaurant, the emergency services secured a prohibited gambling machine, according to their own statements. The operator of the restaurant is now being investigated for illegal gambling. According to the statement, officials of the Citizens' and Public Order Office also discovered an inadmissible betting machine in a tea room. This machine had also been seized. Two other slot machines in the parlour were sealed because they were not connected to a player blocking system that serves to protect gambling addicts. For the same reason, four more gambling machines were sealed in a club and in a café, according to the police.
According to the police, the large-scale operation took place in cooperation with the public prosecutor's office, the main customs office, the tax investigation department and other "network partners" of the police. It is a measure to "combat criminal clan and rocker structures".
bbr/dpa