Monday 29 November 2021
Fight against right-wing extremism
Thuringia demands a look at right money flows
In the fight against right-wing extremism, Thuringia demands a stronger focus on the finances of right-wing organizations. State Interior Minister Maier said that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution needed more competencies. Because a large part of the money flows often run “outside the police focus”.
Thuringia’s Interior Minister Georg Maier has called for the protection of the constitution to monitor right-wing extremist financial flows ahead of the Interior Ministers’ Conference that begins on Wednesday. “Right-wing extremists have various sources of income to finance their structures and activities,” Maier told the editorial network Germany. In order to effectively combat right-wing extremism, it is therefore necessary to take a closer look at their national and international financial flows.
A large part of the financing activities of right-wing extremist organizations, however, “do not take place in the area relevant to criminal law and therefore fundamentally outside the focus of the police”. It was therefore “to check in the short term whether the intelligence services have sufficient opportunities to track transactions for terrorist financing,” said the SPD politician. He advocates an expansion of the powers of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in this area.
With a view to criminal offenses of radicalized corona deniers and vaccination opponents, the North Rhine-Westphalian Interior Minister Herbert Reul also emphasized the importance of online police and intelligence services. “We have to identify perpetrators before they commit an act in order to be able to prevent implementation in the first place,” said Reul to the RND. “That only works if the police and the protection of the constitution are allowed to track down and evaluate the information on the Internet.”
At the conference of interior ministers, Reul also wants to report on a pilot project in North Rhine-Westphalia for the early detection of threats outside of political extremism. “With the periscope concept, people with risk potential in North Rhine-Westphalia will at best end up on our radar earlier,” says Reul. This would minimize the risk of serious acts of violence. The project aims to prevent rampages, for example, by recognizing signs early on.