The German federal government recently presented its official response to a parliamentary inquiry from the AfD faction concerning the financial aspects of the fight against organized crime. The document reveals both the priorities of the federal authorities and certain significant limitations on the effectiveness of investigative bodies. Particular importance is attached to the effective confiscation of assets, since it allows criminal organizations to be deprived of the financial resources that drive their activities and enable them to continue operating.
According to Europol data, as much as 96 percent of dangerous criminal networks in the European Union engage in laundering the money they obtain. Some groups, however, also use the services of so-called specialized providers, who for a fee accept illegal assets and return them in a "cleaned" form. The German government points to the growing importance of informal money transfer systems, such as the Arab hawala, which operate entirely outside the official banking system and are extremely difficult to monitor. Cryptocurrencies are also playing an increasingly important role. Their elusiveness, vague location, and scalability pose a serious challenge to law enforcement. An additional problem is tools such as cryptocurrency mixers, which further significantly complicate tracing the origin of funds.
The international nature of financial flows, complex corporate structures, and the rapid development of technology mean that traditional methods of tracking money are losing their effectiveness.
In recent years, Germany has introduced several significant legislative changes in the area of combating money laundering. Since the legal reform in 2017 in this area, there has been a dynamic increase in assets secured by the police, customs, and other services. Since July 2025, the European institution AMLA (Anti-Money Laundering Authority) has also been operating, tasked with coordinating the activities of national FIU units and facilitating joint analyses of cross-border transactions.
Despite all these actions, the German government's document reveals certain fundamental weaknesses in this system. The lack of a reliable, systematic assessment of whether asset confiscation actually weakens the core of organized criminal groups raises serious questions about the long-term effectiveness of the entire strategy. The federal government openly admits that it does not have the knowledge to assess to what extent the current tools strike at the people who actually control these structures.
The fight against money laundering in Germany therefore remains a process far from achieving success, although legislative and institutional progress is visible.
One of the most spectacular examples of effective asset confiscation in the fight against criminal clans in Germany is the case of Berlin's Remmo-Clan, one of the Arab families once regarded as one of the most powerful organized crime structures in the German capital. In July 2018, Berlin police and prosecutors, using new asset confiscation reform laws, carried out one of the largest operations in the history of the German police. They secured 77 properties, including houses, apartments, and plots of land, with a total value of approximately 9-10 million euros. Most of these properties were located in the Berlin districts of Neukolln and Mitte, with some in Brandenburg. According to investigators, the properties had been purchased with money from criminal activities, including the laundering of money obtained from robberies, extortion, and drug trafficking. Many of them were formally registered in the names of "straw men", mostly people related to the clan but with no legal income that would allow such investments.
The case dragged on for years. In March 2025, the Berlin Regional Court issued a ruling ordering the final confiscation of 58 of these properties. The court found that the properties had been financed from illegal sources and that the complicated ownership structures were intended to conceal the true beneficiaries. The court's decision was made possible by evidence collected in money-laundering proceedings, even though the specific underlying offense had not been fully proven in another criminal trial. The Remmo-Clan thus lost a significant part of its assets, which struck directly at the foundations of its criminal activities.
[Author Aleksandra Fedorska is a journalist for Tysol.pl and numerous Polish and German media outlets]
[Title, lead, the "What You Need to Know" and "Why It Matters" sections, as well as some subheadings, were added by the editorial team]
