Getaway cars and coke taxis: Do clans in Berlin use car rentals for crimes?

In Berlin, criminal families are said to control dozens of rental car companies. According to research by the RBB, the vehicles are used for criminal offenses. According to one investigator, the companies are systemically relevant to the criminal environment in the capital.

According to a media report, around 40 car rental companies provide the criminal clan milieu in Berlin with vehicles in order to be able to commit crimes. As the RBB reports, citing the police, the cars are used as getaway vehicles in the event of burglaries, robberies and for drug deliveries – so-called coke taxis. Luxury cars from the rental companies would also appear in illegal car races.

“These dubious car rental companies are systemically relevant for the criminal milieu in Berlin,” a senior LKA investigator is quoted as saying by the broadcaster. “We found that there are numerous companies that we associate with clan crime. On the one hand, we know that many people who we associate with clan crime use these vehicles and that these people are also behind them.”

The vehicles are often rented out via well-known online trading places, and payment is usually made in cash. The money for the cars, whether bought or leased, mostly comes from illegal machinations. The profits made from this are invested, among other things, in expensive cars, which in turn are used to commit new crimes and generate new profits, the broadcaster reports. Accordingly, there is also the suspicion of money laundering in the room.

According to research, it is often not easy to track down the criminals. The police consider the real owners of the rental car companies to be criminal members of extended families of Arab origin. Straw people, bogus addresses, fictitious tax numbers and constantly changing company names would make the investigation more difficult.

The straw people are apparently recruited primarily in Eastern Europe. According to the RBB, it found a 50-year-old impoverished man in Legnica, Poland, who was employed as managing partner for a car rental company in Berlin-Neukölln. According to the commercial register, the man was also the managing director of six other companies throughout Germany, although he neither speaks nor understands German.