Germany’s capital city, Berlin, ruled by a coalition of left-wing, pro-migration parties – the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), The Left (Die Linke), and The Greens – has been implicated in a potentially massive construction scandal.
The latest scandal comes on the heels of two senior MPs from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU coalition resigning after accusations that they had profited from the COVID-19 pandemic via kickbacks for state purchases of face makes.
At the moment, workers in Berlin are constructing some 50 modular accommodation for asylum seekers. So far, the construction project has swallowed up over €1 billion in taxpayer money.
According to Berlin Senate, the cost to produce one square meter of the new migrant accommodations ranges between €1,600 and €2,600 – a cost regarded by Germany’s opposition as highly dubious and vastly inflated for simple prefabricated buildings. Non-conformist media in German have accused the Berlin government of being involved in another construction scandal.
This particular construction scandal — which has barely been reported on despite its scale — is only one of many questionable excesses of massive building programs in Berlin.
The official name of the housing development is “Modular Accommodation for Refugees”, or MUF for short. A total of 6,000 apartments are slated to be built, which in theory will initially be used to accommodate asylum seekers and migrants before being later used as social housing.
The new accommodation for asylum seekers and migrants is a three-story prefabricated building, built extremely close to another row of houses — just 18 meters away. From the older building, the migrant accommodation is nearly close enough to touch, and has 34 large windows, with several people living behind each. Prior to the construction of the migrant accommodations, the residents of the adjacent row houses looked at a small forest. Today, their view is of a nine-meter-high wall, from which up to 70 people can look back raising concerns about privacy for the residents who already lived in the area.
Many citizens in the area have voiced their angered by the fact that construction of one square meter of these prefabricated homes for migrants — many of whom are technically not supposed to be in the country — cost more than most German taxpayers earn in a single month.
In addition to the high costs, the construction project is also legally questionable, according to the AfD magazine Kompakt.
“We have never experienced such a brazen abuse of special building rights as in Berlin in all of Germany,” one of the party’s lawyers said.
Islamic parties accused of financing terrorism with COVID-19 money
High-level establishment politicians from Germany’s ruling party are not the only ones illegally profiting from alleged coronavirus fraud. Islamic terrorists are also suspecting of profiting substantially from the pandemic as well. At present, the state security and public prosecutors in Berlin are investigating approximately 60 sizeable Islamist groups, associations, and mosque associations involved in criminal dealings.
According to a report from the German daily newspaper Die Welt, which cites “circles of Berlin’s law enforcement authorities”, investigations regarding “direct terrorist financing” are being conducted in a number of cases. In at least three cases there are indications that COVID-19 relief aid was used to finance terrorism in the war zones in the Middle East.
The total level of fraud in the case amounts to €1 millions, and €250,000 has already been recovered during searches and seizures at several mosques, offices of mosque associations, and private apartments in Berlin.
