CDU politician arrested for alleged heroin smuggling

A Christian Democrat Union politician has been arrested for smuggling heroin, party colleagues confirmed on Saturday.

Published: 28 February 2009 13:30 CET

CDU politician arrested for alleged heroin smuggling

Photo:DPA

The 40-year-old candidate for a local council in Neckarsulm in Baden-Württemberg was arrested after police found 80 grams of heroin mixture packed up and ready to sell, as well as more than €5,000 in cash.

“This has hit us out of the blue. I am stunned and furious,” Thomas Strobl, secretary general for the party in Baden-Württemberg said. “If there is anything to these accusations, it would be clever of him to clearly distance himself from his political candidature.”

The police would not comment officially but sources say the CDU man and a younger man were arrested, accused of smuggling drugs from Holland to Germany.

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

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