Peter Fitzek convicted of illegal banking over his 'Royal Reich Bank'

On 1 March 2017 a German court convicted Peter Fitzek, who calls himself the "King of Germany", of running financial businesses without the required licence. He was sentenced to prison, with reports at the time citing a term of three years and eight months.

Fitzek had founded his "Königreich Deutschland" (Kingdom of Germany) in 2012 in Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt. The group rejects the Federal Republic's legal order and belongs to the wider "Reichsbürger" scene, whose followers deny the legitimacy of the modern German state. Within his self-declared realm he set up a "Royal Reich Bank" that took deposits and issued its own payment tokens, and a health fund for members that resembled an insurance scheme.

German financial regulator BaFin had earlier ordered these operations to stop, arguing that banking and insurance business in Germany requires a licence. Fitzek maintained that his kingdom was not subject to such rules. The conviction mattered because it was a rare court test of the Reichsbürger claim that German law does not apply to them, and it shaped how authorities dealt with Fitzek and his followers afterwards.