A lack of transparency rules and hardly any limits on cash payments make Germany a money laundering paradise. Interior Minister Faser now wants to make it more difficult for criminals to deal with dirty cash. Contradiction comes promptly.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has proposed an upper limit of 10,000 euros for cash payments. “I am committed to introducing a general cash limit of 10,000 euros. This reduces the risk of criminals concealing assets,” she told the “Bild am Sonntag”. The aim is to “smash up criminal structures and consistently deprive them of criminal income”.
According to Faeser, transactions from 10,000 euros would then have to be processed electronically and thus comprehensibly for the authorities. This should prevent or at least make it much more difficult for illegally acquired money to be laundered in Germany. “A 30,000-euro cash purchase of jewelry or watches should soon be a thing of the past,” Faeser continues.
In other European countries, there are already significantly stricter upper limits for cash transactions. In France, it is 1000 euros for nationals and 10,000 euros for non-residents in France. Germany, in which such rules have so far been lacking, is internationally regarded as a money laundering paradise. The comparatively lax transparency rules for real estate transactions and company ownership also make it relatively easy to smuggle illegally acquired money into the economic cycle in Germany.
At the end of October, the federal government passed a law that would no longer allow real estate to be paid for in cash in the future. The Bundestag and Bundesrat still have to deal with it.
Contradiction to Faeser’s proposal came from Bavaria’s Finance Minister Albert Füracker, among others. The CSU politician considers a general limit on the use of cash to be disproportionate. “The compulsion to pay digitally does not automatically lead to less crime – this is also shown by cybercrime, which, in case of doubt, gets along entirely without cash,” he said.
