Can you preserve trust in the financial system by combating money laundering?

Preventing financial crime

Criminal and terrorist organisations and individuals launder money to finance their activities. Ultimately, law-abiding citizens pay the price. For example, through higher taxes as it becomes more expensive to enforce the law. Or because corruption undermines confidence in our economy, resulting in economic instability. DNB supervises financial institutions to ensure that they do everything possible to prevent criminals and terrorists from laundering money. This is known as their “gatekeeper role".

The gatekeeper role

Financial institutions must comply with the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act (Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme – Wwft). Among other things, they are required to carefully check the background of their customers and investigate the origin of large or unusual sums of money.

When most people think of financial institutions, they tend to think of banks. And that’s only logical. Everyone has experienced an extensive identification requirement when opening a personal or business account at a bank. But the sector is much broader. DNB’s Financial Crime Supervision department not only supervises the integrity of banks, but also of payment institutions, insurers, crypto service providers, trust offices and other institutions. By constantly calling attention to financial crime, we help to minimise the societal costs of money laundering.

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