Police in western Germany launch massive raids against criminal clans

[nitpicker]

https://www.dw.com/en/police-in-western-germany-launch-massive-raids-against-criminal-clans/a-47062084

Police in western Germany launch massive raids against criminal clans

Date 12.01.2019
Author Darko Janjevic

German police launched simultaneous raids in six cities across the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) on Saturday evening, with some 1,300 officers sweeping shisha bars and other venues in Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Bochum, Recklinghausen and Gelsenkirchen. Authorities said they were targeting family crime clans of Arabic background in the northwestern state. According to the mass-circulation Bild daily, police are focusing on the Arabic crime syndicates, especially those with Lebanese background.

Police spokesman Oliver Peiler told reporters that the coordinated raids started at 9 p.m. local time (2000 UTC).
"As we do quite often, tonight we are checking numerous shisha-bars (…) because the shisha bars act as sanctuaries for members of these family clans," he said.

Clans also use shisha bars, cafes, and gambling venues for money laundering and other illegal business activities, according to media reports. Police in Essen tweeted that a man has been detained carrying €9,000 ($10,322) in cash. "He will now need to prove to the authorities that the money has been obtained legally," they said.

While dozens of people have been searched and mutiple properties swept, police are only expected to release official results of the crackdown on Sunday.

Firefighters, customs officers, members of the tax collection service and communal police officers were deployed alongside police squads. Police forces in the affected cities also shared images of the raids on social media under the hashtag "#NullToleranz," or zero tolerance.

There are about 50 criminal clans active in NRW, with their collective membership topping 10,000, according to police information cited by the Rhenische Post newspaper.
(snip)

[DFW]

1. I live in NRW. The clans are a BIG problem

They virtually OWN large sections of the cities mentioned, and control some criminal activity beyond there. The capital of the State, Düsseldorf, is a 16 minute train ride from Duisburg, and the huge city of Köln (Cologne) is just 40 km south of Düsseldorf.

Detaining someone just for having €9000 in cash is a little weak, though. The EU has a €10,000 threshold for cash declarations across its borders and it's also the German limit for undeclared cash transactions within the country (like the $10,000 limit in the USA). If the cops detain someone and confiscate someone's money just for having €9000 on their person, they'll need some reason to back up their suspicion of wrongdoing, or else they'll find themselves on the losing end of a lawsuit.