Police organisation
Bundeskriminalamt
Germany’s federal criminal police office: a central investigative and coordinating body that takes on investigations at the direction of the Federal Prosecutor General.
At a glance
- Official name
- Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)
- Commonly rendered in English as
- Federal Criminal Police Office — a rendering in common use, not the organisation’s own name.
- System
- Germany
- Level of government
- Federal
- Kind of body
- Criminal investigation agency
- Status
- Currently operating
- Official website
- https://www.bka.de/ — confirmed against the organisation’s own pages on 13 September 2026.
- Facts last checked against sources
- 13 September 2026
What it is
The Bundeskriminalamt describes itself as acting on a statutory mandate (gesetzlicher Auftrag) and as taking on investigations on behalf of the Generalbundesanwalt. It is a criminal-investigation agency rather than a patrol force: it has no general policing role and does not supervise the Landeskriminalämter, the criminal-investigation offices of the sixteen Länder. Austria has an office of the same name; the two are separate institutions in separate states, and the shared name says nothing about shared powers.
What it covers
Federal. Its investigative work arises from the fields assigned to it and from instruction by the Federal Prosecutor General, not from a territory of its own.
Broad responsibilities
- Central criminal investigation in the fields assigned to it
- Investigations undertaken at the direction of the Federal Prosecutor General
- Forensic and analytical support to other police bodies
- International police cooperation
Elsewhere on this site
- Who polices what — how Germany is structured, against other systems
Other organisations to compare
- Bundespolizei — Germany
Where this connects
Institutions: National police.
Sources
Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) — official site
Bundeskriminalamt · Institutional (self-description) · link verified 2026-09-13
SCOPE: the Bundeskriminalamt only. The office’s own site, read directly. Supports the official name "Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)", the English rendering it itself uses ("Federal Criminal Police Office"), its reference to a "gesetzlicher Auftrag", and that it "übernimmt Ermittlungen im Auftrag des Generalbundesanwalts". The page did NOT state which ministry supervises it, and no ministry is asserted from this source. Establishes nothing about the Landeskriminalämter.