The Federal Ministry of Finance and Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) do not get out of the headlines.

Last week the Osnabrück public prosecutor searched the ministry in Berlin.

Scholz's State Secretary and confidante Wolfgang Schmidt published the same search warrant on Twitter.

Reinhard Bingener

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On Tuesday it became known: The public prosecutor's office is now investigating Schmidt.

Search warrants may not be published in full before they are heard in court.

Unprocessed money laundering reports

Last week's measure was related to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in Cologne, a unit for combating money laundering.

Scholz's predecessor in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), had removed the FIU from the Federal Criminal Police Office and slammed it into customs.

The Ministry has been responsible for them ever since.

However, there have been complaints for years that the banks are reporting large numbers of suspicious cash flows, but that these reports are not properly processed by the FIU and passed on to the prosecutors.

The public prosecutor's office is therefore investigating the suspicion of thwarting punishment in the office.

Scholz said on Sunday in the chancellor candidate “Triell” by ARD and ZDF that the Osnabrück prosecutors investigated the suspicion that “one or two employees” in Cologne “did not work properly”.

"That has nothing to do with the ministry," said Scholz.

According to the public prosecutor's office, the investigations are directed against “those responsible for the FIU”.

However, there are still no accused by name, the investigation is being carried out against unknown persons.

In the investigation, however, the Ministry of Finance is also in view, because at the FIU, the prosecutors have found extensive communication with the house of Scholz.

"We determine whether there are suspects at the FIU, but possibly also in other places," said the public prosecutor's office at the request of the FAZ.

The questions are: “What was the reason for not processing the ad?

Who decided that? "

CDU: SPD stirs up doubts about the independence of the judiciary

In a press release by the authority on Friday it was even said that it was a matter of "whether and, if so, to what extent the management and those responsible for the ministries" were involved in the decisions.

This press release is viewed critically in the SPD, especially since the head of the Osnabrück public prosecutor's office is a veteran CDU man.

The CDU accuses the SPD of raising doubts about the independence of the judiciary with such criticism.

She also accuses Scholz of not having put an end to the obvious excessive demands on the FIU.

He replied that under his aegis, the FIU was increased from 160 to almost 500, and soon even 700 employees.

The pressure to justify itself and the criticism should sound familiar to the SPD's candidate for chancellor.

In Hamburg, where Scholz was first mayor until the government was formed in spring 2018, he has to hear that his financial administration was too compliant with the private bank MM Warburg, which was deeply involved in cum-ex transactions.