German police carry out nationwide raid against Reichsbürger members

Amid reports of planned attacks on police officers, asylum seekers and Jews across Germany, authorities launched a police raid on 12 apartments yesterday, believed to belong to the "Reichsbürger" members- which translate to "Citizens of the Reich." The extremist group is considered as a terrorist organization in Germany as its members procures arms and ammunition.

The police operation took place in Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt.

Members of the movement do not recognize the modern German state and its laws, but believe the former German Reich still exists.

As Reichsbürger members refuse to acknowledge the German constitutional state, they do not accept to pay any taxes or fines for the German state. They still follow the legal rules of the 3rd Reich and stick to the borders of the 1930s.

Focusing on the smallest EU member state, Reichsbürger used legal loopholes to operate from Malta. Therefore, they send out official court orders – notarized by Maltese law – to German judges who urged them to follow the German states demands to comply with their tax obligation as a German citizen.

Malta agreed with Germany on the extradition of the so-called Reichsbürger last December. Since 2014, Reichsbürger have been using the "Malta-Method" - a special trick to avoid tax penalties from Germany. Instead of paying their fines, they urged German judicial authorities with counterclaims of up to 50,000 euros.

So far the members used the online trade register Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) to register their demands. Everyone can operate with UCC and there is no filter of participants. Those demands were supposed to be collected by their own Maltese collection agency. Finally, their demands had to be contradicted in German courts within 30 days; otherwise the fines had to be paid. Until today, the Malta-Method had not been successful.

According to internal sources, psychological terror is the first step to success for Reichsbürger.

German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported last month that the number of internal disciplinary matters related to the Reich Citizens' Movement across German police forces have increased markedly recently.