In Leipzig, the security authorities are increasingly confronted with growing threats posed by the spread of large Syrian extended families. According to consistent media reports in *Bild*, *Junge Freiheit* and *Focus*, the Saxon State Criminal Police Office (LKA) is focusing in particular on the structures of four family clans. Together, they are said to comprise around 1,000 people. In one of the families, a significant proportion of the nuclear family is reported to have already come to the attention of the authorities for criminal offences.
The head of one of the families is attracting particular attention. According to the LKA, he is a patriarch who is said to have at least three wives, 32 children and at least 25 grandchildren. His family is also under scrutiny by the investigating authorities: almost two-thirds of the members of the nuclear family are said to have already come to the attention of the authorities for criminal offences – including traffic offences, drug trafficking, money laundering, people smuggling, threats, grievous bodily harm, robbery and benefit fraud.
However, according to the Saxon Ministry of the Interior, the scale of the phenomenon cannot by any means be reduced to a single extended family. The Ministry confirmed to German newspaper Bild: “The police have recorded approximately 130 individuals associated with the Syrian clan milieu in the Leipzig area as having a criminal record.”
The term ‘clan milieu’ describes a social environment in which family ties play a particularly significant role in the organisation of criminal structures. However, membership of an extended family does not automatically imply criminal involvement on the part of individual members. What is decisive are specific investigations and proven criminal offences. The focus of the security authorities’ work is therefore on individual families and individuals who are alleged to have repeatedly come to the attention of the criminal justice system.
The alleged misuse of state social benefits is a particularly serious matter. The head of the family, who has at least 32 children and whose identity the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) is withholding for data protection reasons, is in principle entitled to receive child benefit for his children, provided the relevant legal requirements are met. With 32 children, the child benefit amounts to just under 100,000 euros per year.