What is the role of the Wwft supervisory authorities in relation to FIU Netherlands?
To enable the supervisory bodies to carry out their monitoring tasks, each quarter they receive a report from FIU-the Netherlands containing aggregated data about reporting behaviour in the sector under their supervision. Their status as supervisory authority also mandates them to, for instance, approach you directly to request information about your reporting behaviour and – if this is not satisfactory – to give instructions or undertake further steps. Since reporting behaviour falls under the Wwft supervisory authorities, that is where you should turn for any questions about how to interpret the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act (Wwft), and about what does or does not fall under the Act. The supervisory authorities have written guidelines on this to assist the relevant sectors.
Under the Wwft, FIU-the Netherlands is the implementing party. We receive your unusual transaction reports, and we are the only party that can inspect these unusual transactions. Analysing such transactions is the daily work of a large proportion of our staff. Given that this work is classified as state secret, there are many details that we cannot discuss with you, but this does not mean that we do not welcome your questions. We are not permitted to answer the question of what must be reported and what not. But we can help you with questions about how to report an unusual transaction and how you can ensure your report is as informative as possible. And we try to provide tools to assist you in your task as a gatekeeper of the financial system. You are always welcome to contact us about such matters.
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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?’’.