Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - The police in North Rhine-Westphalia confiscated around 151 million euros in assets last year - 70 million euros alone in the investigation into the invented cryptocurrency "OneCoin". This emerges from the new "Financial Investigations" situation report by the State Criminal Police Office (LKA), which was published on Friday.
Mainly due to the "Oncecoin" investigations surrounding the fugitive "crypto queen" Ruja Ignatova, the sum of secured assets increased by almost 180 percent compared to the previous year. But the number of procedures involving the securing of assets also increased by 10.3 percent (from 1255 to 1384). The number of preliminary investigations received by the LKA on suspicion of money laundering rose by around 82 percent to 2280 (previous year: 1251).
NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) spoke of an "extraordinary success" in relation to the secured assets in an interview with the dpa news agency. This shows "how important it is that all players in internal security pull together to combat illegal financial flows."
Reul emphasized: "Ultimately, the perpetrators are usually concerned with money - with profits from crimes that make the illegal assets even larger. And what hurts more than the loss of the "hard-earned" illegal assets."
