Prior to 2000, you rarely ever heard any German politician or journalist hype up money-laundering.
Over the past five years? It's probably mentioned via ARD or ZDF (the two public TV networks) at least once or twice via their normal reporting or their news documentary pieces.
What's really happened here? Well....it used to be (at least before the 1980s)....criminal gangs/clans made their 'loot', and took it back to the homeland (Italy, Russia, etc).
At some point in the 1990s....they got 'capital-smart', re-investing the money into structures or apartment buildings.
Presently? In 2016, the authorities were guessing around 50-billion Euro was being driven into Germany's urban areas (some were even guessing upward to 100-billion).
What's Germany done to really resolve this? Well....not much.
There has been a EU-Germany discussion....where they think a new rule could be made that you could only spend 10,000 Euro in cash on something....with the rest required to move from bank to bank (digital move).
The EU has decided that it actually needs a 'headquarters' to manage this whole idea of money-laundering. So I noticed it discussed in regional HR news, and the hype is....the Germans want this headquarters in Frankfurt.
Odds of this? The banking headquarters for the EU is in Frankfurt.....so it makes some sense.
As for the 10,000 Euro idea to limit things, and halt money-laundering? You'd have to make this a rule for all EU countries to accept, and my guess is...at least five or six would say 'no'.
Could you make a work-around if such a 10,000 Euro limit were implemented? It'd take some creativity, but I'm pretty sure that they'd invent a whole new way of shuffling the money around....faking out the authorities.
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