News

Germany's financial intelligence unit, an agency long-plagued by thousands of unprocessed suspicious transactions reports, received a record 300,000 STRs in 2021, more than double the previous year's record total, and forwarded 44,000 of them to judicial authorities. STR volumes in Germany, like those throughout western Europe, have steadily risen over the past two decades but never before has the German FIU recorded a year-on-year rise of more than 100 percent until last year. The spike contrasts with more modest rises in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium and brings Germany's total closer to that of the United Kingdom, consistently the largest...