Authorities detained 10 suspects, including two lawyers and one government employee.
The group is suspected of exploiting special provisions for foreign skilled workers to issue residence permits to hundreds of wealthy foreigners, primarily Chinese nationals but also individuals from the Arab region.
Clients paid between 30,000 and 350,000 euros to the lawyers, who then created fictitious companies to employ the clients and issued them salaries on paper. This facilitated their acquisition of residence permits in Germany.
New Zealand has an investor visa which grants permanent residence but not citizenship. Wouldn’t be surprised if any other countries do that too.
This seems to also be the Italian scheme.