German investigators have confiscated €40m worth of real estate and cash as part of an ongoing investigation of money laundering. The AP reports that German authorities said they’d been working to break up a scheme to take money out of Russia for the past three years and had been focusing on three individuals involved in the case. The seized properties were located in the center and southern part of Germany, reportedly in Regensburg, Nuremberg, Mühldorf am Inn, and Schwalbach am Taunus. Along with the properties, around €8m in cash were seized from German and Latvian banks, just a fraction of the €22bn prosecutors believe was moved from Russia to Europe through false companies and complicit banks. The AP says German prosecutors had dubbed the scheme as the ‘Russian Laundromat’ and that it clean the stolen money by investing in high-value real estate.
