Even one and a half years after the start of the Customs Special Unit for the fight against money laundering, no end of its huge problems seems to be in sight. At the so-called Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in the Cologne Customs Criminal Office, there are still nearly 20,000 indications of suspicious transactions that have not yet been processed. These hints come mainly from banks. You are obliged to report any conspicuous account movements of the FIU.
As according to SPIEGEL information from the answer of the Federal Ministry of Finance to a request of the left Bundestag deputy Fabio de Masi, the FIU was only able to temporarily reduce the enormous traffic jam back between summer 2018 and beginning of 2019. In the meantime he is again as big as in August of last year. A total of around 121,000 suspicious transaction reports have been received by the FIU since early summer 2017. In just over five percent of these cases, there was evidence of terrorist financing.
"The FIU remains a hotbed of money laundering," says parliamentarian de Masi, financial expert of the Left Party in the Bundestag. "Germany continues to be Gangster's Paradise - especially in the real estate sector, where a dirty-money party is on the rise, the state failure has to end, we finally need a money-laundering master plan."
Of 475 additional planned posts, only 162 have been taken
In its presentation, the Federal Ministry of Finance now has to concede once again that the FIU has dealt with many highly suspicious cases far too slowly. In 17 cases, reports received by banks from customs have been forwarded to the relevant police stations so late that the suspicious transfers could no longer be stopped. Maybe there are even more such mistakes. The countries sometimes report higher numbers of missed deadlines.
Among these references were also reports of suspicion of terrorist financing, as the SPIEGEL and the Bavarian radio had already found out last summer. At that time the customs spoke of "unforeseen dysfunctionalities", but they were anything but unforeseen. Professionals had warned about these problems. Customs announced that it would hire more staff, which was 475 posts to be filled by the end of 2019. But the FIU is still far from that. According to the ministry, only 162 posts have been allocated so far.
Months ago, SPIEGEL research revealed how dissatisfied the police and the judiciary were with the customs work. In an internal report, the BKA had gathered the experiences of all state criminal police departments with the FIU. The Land authorities are responsible for investigating the suspicious cases that the FIU forwards them. The document, drawn up in the fall of 2018, listed twelve pages of shortcomings and omissions of the customs unit.
Political head-birth
Thus, FIU reports to police and prosecutors were often incomplete, flawed and altogether useless. "Content analysis of facts and sales are hardly available," said in the paper. Also from the Thuringian State Criminal Police Office was in 2018 scathing criticism of the FIU loud. At that time it was said, out of the chaos "a considerable risk for the internal security" grew up. And even a long time later, the provincial authorities - police and justice - are extremely dissatisfied with the work of the Customs, as inquiries by the Left Party in Hesse and Saxony-Anhalt revealed.
The key problem of the FIU, as all experts agree, will hardly be solved in the medium term anyway. In order for customs to be able to judge which referral is really sensitive, they would need automated access to the most sensitive information in all police departments for state protection and organized crime. But that will not happen in the next few years - and maybe never. The countries reject that decidedly.
And so the FIU remains what it was from the beginning: a political head birth of the former Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble, from which an administrative unit has emerged that moves a lot of paper and does little to align it. At least not in the fight against money laundering.
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