When I received the order in May 2019 to review the infamous #IbizaVideo, I could hardly have imagined that this would be the start of one of Europe’s greatest political scandals. I am George A. Rauscher, a forensic expert. When Süddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegel approached me, I knew immediately that this task would be anything but ordinary.
The Police Crime Statistics (PKS) is a comprehensive record of police-registered offenses, aggregated from the data of individual states and systematically processed until final resolution. This foundational statistic depicts the development of crime since 2004. However, it is important to understand that only offenses reported to the authorities are included in this statistic. A multitude of offenses—especially those that fall directly under the jurisdiction of the public prosecutor, such as financial and tax crimes, perjury offenses and state security offenses—remain unaccounted for. Moreover, foreign crimes, administrative offenses and most traffic violations are not included.