In Hannover and the surrounding area, customs and the public prosecutor’s office searched five locations, including two brothels. This was announced by the Hannover Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Hannover Main Customs Office in a joint statement on August 28, 2026.
The accusation is directed at three suspects: a 44-year-old registered as the managing director of both businesses, her 50-year-old life partner, and a 43-year-old business partner. Since at least 2019, they are said to have employed at least five people as security personnel or caretakers without paying social security contributions. The interesting part is the structure behind it: In 2020, the 50-year-old was prohibited from conducting a business. The investigators are pursuing the suspicion that he continued to run the operation in practice while the officially registered managing director was a front person. This is compounded by the suspicion of social benefit fraud, as two of the suspects are said to have received benefits over years without reporting income. The presumption of innocence applies.
The statement explicitly notes: There is currently no suspicion of illegal work against the sex workers employed in the two businesses.
What This Means for Daily Work
Two points are useful beyond this individual case. First, the case shows that a raid in the sex industry does not automatically target the sex workers — here it targets the business level. Nevertheless, such an operation affects everyone in the house: confiscated documents, blocked premises, lost work days.
Second, the actual lesson: who really has the say in the business is a security matter. If the person who gives instructions, sets prices, and handles billing is not the person listed on the permit, then you have effectively no accountable counterpart for house rules, safety guarantees, and billing. In Germany, the permission under the ProstSchG (Prostitutes Protection Act) depends on the reliability check of the operator — a front-person arrangement circumvents exactly this check. In Switzerland, the same question arises with cantonal registration and licensing requirements. And if security personnel are employed illegally, the very people who are supposed to intervene in an emergency are neither insured nor documented — an incident can hardly be proven afterward.
Do you ask before taking on work who actually runs a business — and how do you find that out anyway?
The full statement is available on the press portal.