Dutch and German police break up gold money-laundering ring

Dutch and German police and German customs deployed 500 staff on 7 October against an international money-laundering network, with support from Europol. Five suspects were arrested: four in Germany and one in the Netherlands, a 55-year-old man from Rotterdam who was picked up in Eindhoven.

Police suspect the Rotterdam man was an underground banker with ties to a Turkish-German criminal organisation. He is thought to have been involved in receiving and sending cash totalling about €60m.

German police also searched properties in Sliedrecht and Zwijndrecht in the Netherlands, and about forty locations in several German states.

In Germany, police seized nineteen vehicles, real estate worth at least €2m, about €100,000 in cash and a large amount of gold for melting down and silver bars. The four German suspects are men aged 43 to 59.

How the scheme worked

The case began in October 2023, when German traffic police found a modified vehicle on a motorway. It held kilos of gold and almost half a million euros in cash.

The investigation found that the organisation used dirty money, probably from the drug trade, to buy gold. Police say the gold was smuggled to Turkey and made into luxury jewellery, which was used to pay clients or sent back illegally to Germany to compensate jewellers.