German police and prosecution began a crackdown on foreign citizens – mostly Romanians – taking advantage of the country’s generous welfare system, weekly magazine Der Spiegel writes. In an interview with the magazine Stefan Müller, public prosecutor in the northwest German town of Duisburg near the Dutch border said police staked out two jobless centers and seized several luxury vehicles from Romanians coming to pick up their monthly allowance.
The cars included a Mercedes 500, BMWs and Porsches. According to German law welfare recipients cannot posses cars with a value exceeding EUR 7,500. A low-mileage used Mercedes 500 still costs about ten times as much.
Müller said the state recently appointed two undercover special prosecutors to Duisburg, the town with the highest incidence of welfare fraud. According to the current German regulation regarding jobless and social benefits, the so-called Hartz IV, if a single person in a family has a part-time job of at least 15 hours a week, the rest of his family is entitled to a monthly allowance of EUR 420 per month.
He said Duisburg is the town with the highest incidence of such fraud, mainly perpetrated by Romanians, citizens from the former Yugoslav states and Albania. There are 8,000 Romanians with a registered residence in Duisburg. Müller named these groups “clans”, saying that none of their members have worked a single day in their lives. He said including family members there are at least 2,800 people belonging to the clans in Duisburg. In addition of possessing luxury vehicles, most of them also have high-value real estates in their home countries or elsewhere – a fact that would also preclude them from receiving social benefits.
According to figures from the German Federal Statistics Office (Statistisches Bundesamt) some 623 thousand Romanians were registered in GErmany, most of them either working or studying. But of those without a job only 5.9% were actively seeking employment.
