Kristin Schmit, director of Luxembourg's Criminal Investigation Department, spoke with RTL Radio on Wednesday. The discussion began with the case announced by the public prosecutor's office on Tuesday, in which 25 people have been charged and more than 200 asylum seekers are believed to have had their documents forged. Over the past three years, 27 searches have been carried out in connection with the investigation.
Schmit said she could not comment on the substance of the judicial investigation, but pointed to a broader issue highlighted in the prosecutor's statement: the lack of effective information-sharing between administrations.
According to Schmit, public bodies are often unable to exchange information when they have doubts or suspect that something is wrong. "There is always this wall of data protection", she said, adding that this was something that needed to be reconsidered.
She described this as part of the development of an "administrative approach" to organised crime, which the police are working on together with the Ministry of Home Affairs. The aim is to improve the flow of information between administrations, as organised criminal networks may try to infiltrate different parts of the system, she said.
"When you look at it from the perspective of a judicial investigation, you see small construction sites everywhere", Schmit said. "But those individual sites are not allowed to work together on the bigger construction site. We are stuck in silo thinking, and silo thinking is what benefits organised crime."
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