Just as the UK's old National Criminal Intelligence Service had a backlog - which it denied having - of 52,000 unprocessed reports in the early noughties, the German financial intelligence unit now reportedly has the same problem.

Handelsblatt reports that the Zentralstelle für Finanztransaktionsuntersuchungen has a backlog of tens of thousands of reports, quoting an unnamed police officer who told it that he had received a report that a member of Al Qaeda had been operating a bank account in Germany for six months, and that this incident was far from isolated. The unit is reportedly woefully understaffed. State criminal agencies have all complained to the national paper that the FIU is responsible for tips about terrorist financial activity taking months to reach their desks.

Die Zeit, meanwhile, reports that "Germany attracts dirty money from all over the world and is considered a paradise for financial criminals in Europe. A study commissioned by the Ministry of Finance estimates that more than 100 billion euros are laundered each year in Germany - in restaurants, by gambling or by the purchase of real estate. The financial sector is not even included in this estimate." It reports that the head of the FIU has left his post at the understaffed unit in unexplained circumstances, opening the door to speculation that the Minister of Finance has dismissed him.