Dutch banks argue for EU criminal investigation against financial crime

Photograph by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

The Dutch Banking Association (NVB) has offered the European Union a plan with fifteen action points for a EU-wide control of money laundering and financial fraud. The plan includes proposals for a new central EU regulation, a European money laundering supervisor and a EU-wide Financial Intelligence Service.

The presentation of the Dutch banking plan is more or less in line with new fines imposed by Dutch Central Bank on Dutch banks because they have not yet carried out their checks.

At the beginning of this year, it was announced that Rabobank had been fined more than 1 million euros because the system with which the bank checks money laundering customers up to and including 2016 was not sharp enough. As a result, important information about customers could be missing, and the bank, for example, did not always know who owned a business.

If a client file ends up in the lowest risk category, a bank no longer has to worry about it. Customers in the middle risk category must be reassessed once every three years, and customers in the highest category must be reviewed annually by the bank.

If customers work in a sector with an increased risk - such as car dealership or real estate - they cannot end up in the lowest category. The same applies to people who also have bills in risk countries such as Malta, Russia or Angola.

According to the Rabo spokesperson, the processes within the bank are now in order, but it is now important to process all files according to this method. Whether the bank will meet the April 2020 deadline is unclear

Within EU, the Netherlands is a forerunner with the banks' plan to jointly monitor payment transactions. The NVB believes that the EU legislation should explicitly allow this cooperation between gatekeepers, so that the fight against money laundering can be improved.

Chris Buijink, chairman of the Dutch Banking Association, says a press release about this: “We believe that the current inadequate approach to combating financial crime also requires a strong European response. Financial crime is a cross-border problem that requires cross-border solutions, both at European and at global level. "