Clan criminality is perceived as a worrying trend in Germany. Law enforcement needs to engage new strategies to successfully combat these structures, an ‘external’ criminal threat within the country and beyond.
Clan criminality in Germany has received increased media attention in the past years. Although criminal offences committed by clans were thought to constitute a very small proportion of all offences in the country in 2020, the visibility and impact of clan criminality – including the 2019 high-profile heist of historic jewels worth an estimated €113.8 million – has made this phenomenon a priority.
According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s Global Organized Crime Index 2021, Germany has a criminal actor score of 5.00 in the ‘mafia-style groups’ indicator, one of the highest for countries in Western Europe and above the global average of 3.89. Its criminal foreign actors score of 6.50 is also higher than the global average (5.27).
In Germany, mafia-style groups (i.e. organized criminals with a known name, a defined leadership, territorial control and identifiable membership) include both foreign and domestic groups, such as the Italian mafia, Russian-Eurasian organized crime groups, biker gangs and the so-called clan organizations.
Clan criminality is perpetrated by family-based networks, who commit a variety of crimes such as armed robberies, theft, bombing of ATM machines, money laundering and drug trafficking. ‘We are dealing here with … serious criminals … with robbery, fraud and organized crime … This shows that some of the clans are playing in the same league as the mafia,’ said Herbert Reul, Interior Minister of the North Rhine-Westphalia state.
Clan groups are known for their tight-knit structures based on familial ties, but most of all for their aggressive behaviour towards the police and other state agencies. State responses to the problem have focused on areas such as cooperation between state forces, confiscation of illegal wealth, investigation of minor offences and, perhaps most importantly, the development of strategies designed to deter young clan members from pursuing criminal careers.
In February 2021, some 500 police officers from Berlin and Brandenburg searched over 20 homes after information on illegal weapon deals had been uncovered. In another case, a clan member is accused of money laundering and organizing a cocaine courier service to Berlin.
German clan criminality is not a uniquely domestic phenomenon. Although most clan-related criminal activities are committed in Germany, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office’s 2020 criminality report, there were 29 organized crime proceedings in which members of German clans were active in other countries. Often, the informal hawala payment system is used to transfer money across borders.