Lindner wants more steps to be taken against money laundering in Germany, including the establishment of the Federal Financial Criminal Police Office.
(Photo credit: IMAGO/dts news agency)
Berlin The Federal Treasury wants to strengthen the controversial Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) for money laundering by amending the Money Laundering Act. This is a draft law that “strengthens the risk-based working methods of the Central Office of Financial Transactions Investigations,” which is available to Handelsblatt.
The aim of the law is to “establish a central office in its workflow in a future-proof manner” so that it can “do justice to the ever-increasing volume of reporting,” the draft said.
FIUs have made negative headlines several times in the past. Last year, it was understood that around 100,000 alleged money laundering reports were not processed further between January 2020 and September 2022.
It was also recently learned that between 2020 and 2022, authorities received almost 17,000 indications of other crimes that the Special Forces had only forwarded to police authorities and prosecutors a few weeks earlier.
Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) wants clearer legal mandates to prevent such incidents in the future. The FIU’s so-called “risk-based approach” will be made explicit in the law.
Suspicious activity reporting options should be more precise
The task of the FIU is not only to forward reported suspicious cases, but also to analyze them in order to create real added value for the police and prosecutors.
Without this filtering capability, almost all reports of suspicious activity in the past would have resulted in an investigation. However, the result was that FIUs piled up so many suspected cases that they went untreated.
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The goal of the new law is to “more efficiently filter and select reports” and then analyze the reports. According to the draft law, the focus should be on reporting money laundering, related predicate offenses and terrorism financing. Simplify cooperation between central offices and law enforcement authorities.
As a result of these events, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) is also planning to create a new Federal Financial Criminal Police Office, under which the Financial Intelligence Unit will operate. According to the draft, changes to the law will be initiated before the handover to the new agency in order to make the work process more efficient in the short term.
Anti-Money Laundering Issues
Weeks after the 2022 processing backlog came to light, then-FIU chief Christof Schulte resigned, as officials say, “for personal reasons”.
At the end of March, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) appointed Daniel Selesclough as the new head of the Financial Intelligence Unit. Tresclough was already the head of the anti-money laundering divisions in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Not long ago, international experts submitted a mixed report to Germany on the fight against money laundering. As a result, experts from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) determined last autumn that there was a money laundering problem in Germany. “Significant improvements are needed in certain areas,” the analysis said.
more: Fighting money laundering: Authorities only receive half of suspicious activity reports