Are dealers profiting from the new cannabis law because of a loophole in the Code of Criminal Procedure? That is what the CDU/CSU justice ministers suspect and are therefore calling on the Federal Minister of Justice to make rapid improvements. But he sees no reason to rush.
A few days after the new Cannabis Act (CanG) came into force on April 1, a ruling by the Mannheim Regional Court (LG), which LTO had also reported on (judgment of April 12, 2024, ref. 5 KLS 804 Js 28622/21), caused a stir: A 36-year-old was acquitted of the charge of illegally importing around 450 kilograms of marijuana with a total value of around 1.9 million euros. The public prosecutor's office had accused the man of smuggling large quantities of the drug from Spain to Germany several times in 2020. However, the investigators only caught on to him after evaluating encrypted chat messages from the Encrochat software.
However, due to the associated interference with the secrecy of telecommunications protected by Article 10 of the Basic Law, Encrochat data may only be used as evidence if it is a matter of solving particularly serious crimes and if the requirements for an online search under Section 100b as regulated in the Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO) are met. Only then is the principle of proportionality guaranteed, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) postulated in March 2022 .
