Frankfurt to host new EU anti-money laundering agency
Frankfurt to host new EU anti-money laundering agency
The financial hub in central Germany beat eight other cities vying to host the bloc's Anti-Money Laundering Authority.
Yes, finally! We can't get our own anti-money laundering agency to work, so we just open a new agency for the whole EU. Close to the Deutsche Bank headquarters. Makes things easier for oligarchs and despots.
Germany is one of the worst countries if it comes to fighting money laundering schemes. We had a huge reform some time ago and the agency is a big joke. We had our own finance ministry raided because of that ffs. So this is either intentional or someone in charge has serious brain damage.
i bet the genious idea was "we put it where it's worst, so it helps there the most." unfortunately not everything works like that.
Isn't Germany known for being a paradise regarding money laundering in Organized Crime circles? Or am I misinformed?
I heard the same! Germans love their cash and that makes it easy for money laundering.
It's more like German politicians love donations from the big money launderers and tax dodgers so much that they continually make sure to systematically underfund, understaff, and disempower any authorities tasked with investigating and prosecuting financial crimes.
No, it is much more systematic than that.
When it comes to typical money laundering or tax evasion businesses like restaurants the tax investigators can be very throughout. That goes as far calculating how much fryer oil was bought vs. how many fried dishes were declared to be sold.
What we instead see is huge issues with buying and selling properties. Not only does it remain legal against all common sense to buy them in cash and without any declaration about the moneys origin, in many places the "tough on crime, we need to fight the arab gangster families" conservatives forbid the people at the land register to report fish property deals.
Now the current government with a neoliberal finance minister pushed for austerity politics. The biggest cut in the sector of the finance ministry were tax and money laundering investigators, whose budget was cut by half.
Meanwhile property investment companies became the largest donors to political parties, exceeding energy companys in the past decade. They know the sector is riddled with crime and they know that their best customers are organized criminals. Someone who needs to launder millions of drug and prostitution money is not going to haggle over the last 10% of the price.
Short commutes can be a big plus.
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Anti money laundering agency right next door to a bunch of giant industrial money laundries? That's German efficiency.
They don't even need to leave their building, just sit in the front door and arrest every suit that walks past.
not the onion material right there...
lol
Send the Germans on it!
Good news actually, we're at least trying to do something.
Absolutely not! We are one of the safest countries when it comes to money laundering. Ever heard of Deutsche Bank? Plus we have an agency that does - nothing. For years now. After some conservative minister (Schäuble I think) decided to make a new agency and ditch the working one.
Just one example what happened with Wirecard, I'll try to find more english articles.