News item | 10-06-2025 | 15:30
Heavy criminals are always driven by a desire for money and power. Not only to live in luxury, they also need the money to maintain their criminal company. Money is needed to buy new drugs and weapons and to use henchmen. That is why Weel of Justice and Security Minister will continue to focus on breaking criminal revenue models. He also believes it is important to protect the integrity of the Netherlands and to prevent criminals from gaining more power with their ability.
Minister Van Weel: “Packing assets is an important means of breaking through criminal revenue models, but by no means the only one. With a coherent and flexible approach criminals, we have to make it very difficult to make money, move and use money.”
In recent years, the objectives of the Public Prosecution Service (OM) have been amply achieved to seize capital. In the coming years, the OM wants to seize more capital. There, cooperation is looked for with countries that play a role in this. FIOD and the police are also focusing on finding out criminal capacity abroad. The minister will soon be able to take illegally earned assets due to new European rules without prior conviction. And that is desperately needed, given the recent example of the claim of the OM on Jos Leijdekkers of € 221 million.
The minister has intensified the collaboration with various organizations to raise even more barriers to money laundering of illegally earned money. This way you can quickly respond to new tactics of criminals. One of the most important money laundering risks are underground banking systems. Decisive cryptocommunications show that criminals move criminal capacity on a large scale within a financial underground system by, for example, cash and crypto transactions. This phenomenon has the attention of the investigation services and is also structurally on the agenda.
Today, the Senate has agreed to a cash ban for goods above € 3000. Cash payments are a well -known route with which criminals money laundering, for example by purchasing expensive watches or clothing. This makes this more difficult for the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Justice and Security with this law. They also focus on a more risk-based anti-money laundering policy. This means that the costs for money laundering policy are among the criminals, while well -meaning people and bona fide entrepreneurs experience fewer burdens.
Resist
With the partners in the undermining approach, important steps have been taken to make the Netherlands more resilient against organized crime. For example, since March 2025 it has been possible to screen port employees for a VOG application for earlier involvement in organized (drugs) crime. This allows people with a criminal background to be banned from a port area. To increase the resilience of entrepreneurs, confidants are active in several sectors, including the agricultural sector and real estate industry. In this way, entrepreneurs can make a low -threshold way about suspicious situations. The ‘Keep crime from your neighborhood’ campaign appears to have a positive effect on identifying suspicious situations and taking action. In the total number of reports, there was an increase of 29% in the campaign period compared to a year earlier in the same period. After the summer of 2025 a follow -up to the first campaign ‘Strange or suspicious’.
Minister Van Weel: “As a trading country, as a trading country, has a unique position as a junction in logistics, transport, financial services and digital infrastructure as a node. That unique position also makes our country interesting for criminals. Organized crime does not keep boundaries. By working together with countries around us, we make a fist against undermining by organized by organized undermining against undermining.”
For example, the Netherlands plays a guiding role in the coalition of seven countries against organized crime (C7). The efforts of the coalition have, among other things, guiding the European safety strategy, which the Commission presented on 1 April 2025.