A possible money laundering scandal of 2,5 billion euros, possibly with the knowledge of the Minister of Finance of Bavaria and future Prime Minister of the state Markus Center, is revealed by the Handelsblatt newspaper and the public broadcaster "Monitor" .
According to the financial newspaper, in 2013, 32.000 apartments owned by the real estate agency GBW, a subsidiary of the Bavarian bank (Bayerische Landesbank), which is 94% owned by the state government, were sold to a consortium of investors under the real estate management company Patrizia Imm .
When asked who the buyers were at the time of the sale, Mr Center said Patrizia was "a Bavarian company with very serious partners, including banks, insurance companies and investors, many of them doctors and lawyers". .
In 2016, however, local television revealed that behind the deal lay a complex network of companies, including a major shareholder - an investment fund registered in Luxembourg, where the identity of the shareholders is kept confidential.
Mr. Center always stated that he did not know the identities of all the investors. In fact, when asked by Handelsblatt, he repeated exactly this position.
The newspaper and the TV show, however, refer to documents that undermine the credibility of Mr. Center's statement.
While Patrizia claimed the funds came from banks and insurance companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, documents show that two companies from Munich were included, which received millions of euros from Russia and Cyprus.
A Russian businessman was the head of one company and the CEO of another.
When the Bavarian authorities approached the Interior Ministry in Moscow about the flow of funds from several Russian companies, the Russian ministry replied that some companies had been involved in "illegal transfer of funds abroad for the purpose of legalizing them (through" laundering ").
The list included both Munich companies that were involved in the housing transaction.
Patrizia, however, insists, according to Handelsblatt, that the purchase of the apartments by GBW "was not financed at any stage with money from Russia".
But even before the deal, the Bavarian police forensic department had received information that millions of dollars from Russia, most likely from criminal transactions, had reached a company that worked with Patrizia in real estate.
Six months before the sale of the apartments, it was reported that Russian investors with a billion alleged black money - undeclared or illegally acquired - were looking for a way to get involved in the deal.
When investigators later asked to investigate the transaction, they were told that Munich prosecutors had closed their "in-depth" investigation - after just eight weeks.
Opposition groups in Bavaria are raising suspicions about the deal, shortly before Mr Center was voted in by the Christian Social Union (CSU) to become prime minister following the impending departure of CSU leader Horst Seehofer. Bavaria.
"The suspicions are there," said Florian Stribble, a member of the Free Voters' Party in the local parliament, and said he had asked Markus Center for clarification and would request a parliamentary inquiry if necessary.