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Chancellor Angela Merkel must be getting greyer by the day we assume with headlines like this. As she is still in the midst of trying to form a government with the social democrats of Mr Martin Schulz, the German press follows-up scandals about diesel fumes with Afghan refugee stabbing and now, weapons and money found during a massive raid for illegal aliens in North-Rhein-Westphalia.
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The raids were carried out after German companies had complained about seeing a great number of illegal workers on construction sites. After searching some 140 properties in a coordinated action, police arrested 8 people (apparently the organizers and backers of a massive network of illegal, off-the-books construction jobs) and seized weapons and money.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="de" dir="ltr">Großeinsatz gegen <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Schwarzarbeit?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Schwarzarbeit</a><a href="https://t.co/u2KwoflmFE">https://t.co/u2KwoflmFE</a></p>— Detektei Kaltenbach (@detektei1999) <a href="https://twitter.com/detektei1999/status/958423174663766017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2018</a></blockquote>
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According to what has been reported so far the illegal turnover amounts up to $60million of which some $40million has now been recovered by the German state.
The public prosecutor for the city of Wuppertal, Mr Wolf-Tilman Baumert stated: “When you think about black labor, what springs to mind is a cleaner paid cash in hand or other small businesses that are a bit liberal with their taxes. What we have here is nothing like that.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="de" dir="ltr">Auch Durchsuchungen im Rhein-Sieg-Kreis - Schlag gegen <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Schwarzarbeit?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Schwarzarbeit</a> am Bau in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NRW?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NRW</a> <a href="https://t.co/BZw7a2OmQ1">https://t.co/BZw7a2OmQ1</a> <a href="https://t.co/kPK2s3O82Y">pic.twitter.com/kPK2s3O82Y</a></p>— General-Anzeiger (@gabonn) <a href="https://twitter.com/gabonn/status/958379503352532992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2018</a></blockquote>
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“These are highly professional criminals who can expect punishment if they are convicted. The legal penalty is a minimum six months custodial sentence per crime totaling up to 10 years,”
During the coordinated raids performed by the police and customs offices, assorted weapons were also uncovered (including two automatic crossbows, axes, knives and a pistol). Several vehicles the criminals used were also seized.
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