https://www.dw.com/en/new-eu-anti-money-laundering-agency-to-be-based-in-frankfurt/a-68346612?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-xml-atom
The financial hub in central Germany beat eight other cities vying to host the bloc's Anti-Money Laundering Authority.
Isn't Germany known for being a paradise regarding money laundering in Organized Crime circles? Or am I misinformed?
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.