I have reported an unusual transaction. Can the party involved find this out through the investigative services?
FIU-the Netherlands stores reports of unusual transactions in a highly secure and protected database, where they are classified as “State secret – secret”. This database can only be accessed by employees of FIU-the Netherlands whose position requires such access. Nobody else has access to the database. If analysis of a given unusual transaction reveals sufficient grounds to designate it suspicious, the suspicious transaction becomes police data, which can be accessed by the investigative, intelligence, and security services. This suspicious transaction is no longer classified as “State secret – secret”, but now falls under the Police Data Act (Wet Politiegegevens).
The investigative services can use a suspicious transaction in various ways, and depending on these uses, it may end up in a prosecution file. If the suspicious transaction is included in a prosecution file, safeguards are in place to protect the safety of the reporting entity. These safeguards were further strengthened by a motion (NL) adopted by the Dutch House of Representatives in 2020.
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Do you want to know whether FIU-the Netherlands has personal data about you and whether you can access it?
The answers to these questions can be found in articles of the General Data Protection Regulation, in the associated directives, and in the Police Data Act (Dutch acronym: Wpg) and Decree. But the bottom line is that you are not allowed to access this data with us. How is that?
All unusual transactions reported to us remain in our database for five years, as required by the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act (Dutch acronym: Wwft). To give an impression of the size of this database, in 2022 we received over 1.8 million unusual transactions (UTRs). It is determined by law that the UTR-information we have, i.e. the unusual transactions and the associated personal data, fall under the classification State Secret – Secret, see Article 5 of the Government Information Security Decree – Special Information. Only authorized FIU employees have access to this information. Therefore, if a person asks us for access to his or her personal data, we are not allowed to provide it. After all, the information is state secret.
Unusual transactions are analyzed by FIU-the Netherlands to establish whether there are sufficient grounds to designate them suspicious. These transactions declared suspicious (STRs) may then be shared with the relevant intelligence, security and investigation services, such as the police and the fiscal intelligence and investigation service (Dutch acronym: FIOD). This is allowed since STRs are legally subject to the Wpg.
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No, you must be registered as a separate reporting entity in each capacity.
If, for example, you are an estate agent and a valuer, then the capacity in which you make the report depends on the situation. In such cases, you need to have two registrations with FIU Netherlands: one as an estate agent and one as a valuer. If you come across an unusual transaction in your estate agency business, you report as an estate agent; if you encounter an unusual transaction when carrying out valuations, you report as a valuer.
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Indicators of unusual transactions are listed in the 2018 Implementation Decree for the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act (Wwft) (Uitvoeringsbesluit Wwft 2018 [in Dutch]). These indicators differ per reporting entity. The page on reporting groups gives an overview of the various indicators per reporting group. If in your view a transaction meets one or more of the indicators that apply to your reporting group, you must report that transaction to FIU-the Netherlands.
If you have questions about how to interpret a given indicator, you can ask your Wwft supervisory authority. This page shows which supervisory authority is responsible for your reporting group. This division of roles is addressed in more detail in the FAQ “What is the role of the Wwft supervisory authorities in relation to FIU Netherlands?’’.