MFederal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) wants to strengthen the fight against money laundering and financial crime with a new federal authority. “We have to consistently follow the trail of the money instead of being satisfied with uncovering a crime related to money laundering,” Lindner told the “Spiegel” according to the advance report on Tuesday. He wants to initiate a “paradigm shift” for this.
According to “Spiegel”, the minister wants to set up a new higher federal authority that will pool competencies in Germany at a central location. According to Lindner’s ideas, the new institution, whose name has not yet been decided, will rest on three pillars. The first, a Federal Criminal Police Office that is also to be established, should consist of an independent search area. Federal officials should work there who should be given real investigative powers.
The second pillar should form the already existing Central Office for Financial Transaction Investigations (FIU). She is responsible for using computer programs to filter out those cases from the numerous suspicious activity reports that the investigators are supposed to investigate. Finally, the third pillar will be a coordinating central office for the supervision of the non-financial sector. This includes, for example, the real estate industry and the gambling industry. In these sectors of the economy, a particularly large amount of black money is channeled back into the regular economic cycle.
