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BERLIN: Several hundred policemen carried out raids in Berlin and Hamburg on Thursday against organized crime, authorities said in a statement.
“More than 500 police officers are currently executing 27 search warrants and three arrest warrants in Berlin and Hamburg,” the Berlin prosecutor’s office said on Twitter.
The raids began at 6 am and targeted two of the so-called “family clans” suspected of illegal property transactions, according to a report in the Tagesspiegel newspaper.
In Berlin, agents searched sites in the districts of Charlottenburg, Mitte and Spandau, the newspaper said.
Connections to the motorcycle scene are also being investigated, he said.
The raids caused “city-wide traffic disruptions” on Thursday morning, the Berlin state transport ministry said.
Media reports mentioned the Arab Abu-Chaker clan and the Turkish Surer clan as the targets of the raids.
Berlin, in particular, has seen several major operations targeting family clans in recent months.
In November, more than 1,600 police officers carried out major raids on a family known as the Remmo clan for a spectacular jewelry theft in the city of Dresden a year ago.
Three members of the family were arrested for the crime, in which more than a dozen diamond-encrusted jewels were seized from a state museum.
The family of Arab origin is known for its ties to organized crime and its members were convicted in February in another high-profile robbery at a museum in central Berlin.
