Foreclosure proceedings are particularly well suited for money laundering. Germany\u2019s National Risk Assessment<\/a> on the Fight Against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing has identified that criminal groups are increasingly using foreclosures to acquire real estate with illicit funds. Recently, Der Tagesspiegel<\/a> reported on the unusual auction of a 22,000 square metre plot of land in Zossen, Brandenburg, which sold for a suspiciously high price of \u20ac283,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Foreclosure proceedings still contain significant legal loopholes. Lawyers, chamber legal advisers, patent attorneys, and notaries are only obliged to comply with the requirements of the Money Laundering Act (AMLA) for certain types of transactions. These include real estate transactions\u2014but only when a property is actually bought or sold. In a foreclosure, the transfer of ownership is executed by sovereign act, and not through a conventional purchase or sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The regional bar associations, which are the supervisory authorities for lawyers, have acknowledged this issue. They admit that foreclosures are not explicitly covered by the current legal wording. However, they advise lawyers to voluntarily comply with the AMLA\u2019s due diligence obligations\u2014justifying this with the risk-based approach underlying the legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This situation is highly problematic. In order to comply with the AMLA\u2019s due diligence requirements, lawyers must collect a large amount of sensitive client data. In addition to name, date and place of birth, nationality, and residential address, lawyers must determine the origin of funds in high-risk cases. They are also required to make copies of identity documents. Whether the risk-based approach of the AMLA offers sufficient legal justification for such intrusive data collection is highly questionable. Lawyers and notaries are caught in a legal grey area \u2014 trapped between the AMLA\u2019s demands and data protection requirements \u2014 with no clear guidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A clear legal mandate from the legislator would therefore be highly desirable \u2014 especially since the Federal Ministry of Finance is well aware of the problem. The first National Risk Assessment from 2018\/2019 already identified it. While there have been initial legislative adjustments since then \u2014 for instance, courts and authorities conducting public auctions are now subject to the AMLA \u2014 there is still no statutory basis for lawyers advising in these matters.\n\nThis legal uncertainty continues to leave professionals without the clarity or protection they need.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2700,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"kategorie":[],"class_list":["post-2707","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2709,"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2707\/revisions\/2709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"kategorie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rp.pleeg-staging.de\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kategorie?post=2707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Legal Loopholes in the Area of Foreclosures<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conflict Between Money Laundering Law and Data Protection<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
No legal basis So Far<\/h2>\n\n\n\n