Pay the common purse or lose the trinkets. The old law returns
Mark the words of the minister Hubig, for they would carry in any century: the majority pay 'without question, without fail and without making a fuss'. That is the villager who tithes his grain sack full and level. Every settled people has known him, and known his opposite — the one who shaves the measure and smiles at the scale. And every functioning village solved this the same way: publicly, plainly, and by the belongings.
So Germany rediscovers the confiscation of the ill-explained. 'The Porsche and the Rolex will be gone for the time being,' says the finance minister, and beneath the modern nouns stands law older than Rome: unexplained wealth answers to the commons. Hold the goods 180 days; let the man produce his provenance. A grandfather would only ask why it lapsed.
Two corrections from the old bench. First: the confession counter open since 1919 — where a caught man buys peace with back taxes — is mercy without shame, and mercy without shame teaches nothing. Close it fully. Second: sentences of fifteen years impress lawyers; restitution impresses villages. Let the fraudster REPAY, publicly, at the rate the nurse pays, and be seen doing it.
As for hiring 1,500 honest counters and a machine to read the shell companies' nesting papers: good. Fraud is softness wearing a briefcase — the belief that the commons is for other men to fill. It is not. Fill the purse. Then rest.