The 67 suspects, mostly from Syria, including two “Islamic threats”, are accused of secretly moving around 100 million euros from criminal activities – including drug trafficking – to Syria and Turkey. For the most part, the accused wanted to enrich themselves personally. Some of the money may also have flowed into terrorist milieus, the investigators said.
While the raid itself is widely discussed in the German mass media, many journalists keep silent about the organized Muslim background of the action. In most of the reports, the term “hawala banking”, ie the actual target object of the entire operation, does not appear at all. Most of the reports cross the line to open disinformation.
An exception was made by Deutsche Welle, which has apparently thoroughly researched the background of the large-scale action by the police and tax investigators and even explains the hawala banking system:
“The hawala system is widespread in Muslim countries. Customers can transfer cash abroad for a comparatively low commission (one to two percent). The system, which has existed for centuries and has its roots in the Middle East, is based on the personal trust of those involved, who often belong to the same ethnic group and have developed in regions with an underdeveloped banking system, according to an analysis by the Federal Ministry of Finance (…) from the year 2019. It allows ‘money to be transferred almost without any possibility of tracing’. The ministry estimates that around 200 billion dollars flow through hawala systems worldwide every year.”