Bundestag election: MPs question Scholz on money laundering investigations

Bundestag election: MPs question Scholz on money laundering investigations Latest news on the Bundestag election 1 hr ago. MPs question Scholz on money laundering investigations Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) is to answer questions in the Bundestag on Monday morning about the search of his ministry in connection with money laundering investigations. The Finance Committee will meet for a special session for this purpose less than a week before the Bundestag elections. The Green Party candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, called on Scholz on Sunday evening at the third TV triell to "full transparency". Whether Scholz has to come to the Bundestag or can join digitally was last open. The deputies participate either digitally or on site. The CDU had called on the minister to cancel his campaign appointments and appear in person. The FDP, the Greens and the Left had requested the special session after the Osnabrück public prosecutor's office showed up at the door of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Justice. The background to the action 17 days before the federal election is investigations against employees of the FIU, a special anti-money laundering unit of the Customs in Cologne, which is assigned to Scholz's Finance Ministry. FIU employees are alleged to have failed to pass on tips about terror financing to the judiciary and police in good time. In this connection, investigators wanted to see documents from both ministries, including e-mails between the FIU and the Finance Ministry and correspondence between the two ministries. According to the Ministry of Justice, the Osnabrück public prosecutor's office had been offered the documents sought long before the search. The public prosecutor's office presents the telephone conversation in question, on the other hand, in such a way that the ministry initially refused to hand over the documents and referred to "the great official channels". Thus one had decided to request searches in both houses. The consensus is that the investigators were able to inspect the documents in question without any problems. The FDP, the Greens and the Left Party now want to talk to the committee about what they see as glaring abuses at the FIU - including its staffing and technical set-up and lack of access rights to databases. FDP financial expert Markus Herbrand assumes that significantly more suspicious activity reports were not passed on than those listed by the public prosecutor's office. The Ministry of Finance had not followed up on concrete indications of serious work errors at the FIU. Union faction vice Carsten Linnemann also demanded clarification from Scholz. "There were obviously great omissions. They must all come to light before the election," the CDU politician told the Rheinische Post.