News item | 23-12-2022 | 3:30 pm
The fight against organized crime is being strengthened with new instruments. To prevent money laundering, transactions that are fishy can soon be temporarily held for investigation with an emergency freeze. In this way, a stick can be put in place for the diversion of criminal assets. The smuggling of black money, weapons or drugs in hidden spaces in cars, trucks or boats is also made more difficult by criminalizing the possession of such means of transport and the construction of secret spaces for criminal purposes.
Minister Yeşilgöz-Zegerius of Justice and Security wants to immediately introduce these two new instruments when updating legislation. The maximum fines will also be increased for more serious forms of theft, given the often large criminal profits involved, and more opportunities will also be created to move major criminal cases to another court. At the proposal of the minister, the government has decided to submit the legislative proposal ‘Strengthening the criminal justice approach to subversive crime 2’ for advice to the Council of State, in which this will be regulated.
Minister Yeşilgöz: “In the fight against organized crime, we have to keep our legislation and instruments constantly up to date. Driven by enormous criminal profits, new ways and often ruthless violence are used to promote the illegal trade. That is why we also want to destroy the underlying criminal structures. In this way we prevent criminal assets, weapons and drugs from continuing to circulate in our society and we prevent wrong money and weapons from being used for new criminal practices.”
Emergency freezing
Seizing criminal assets is an important key to breaking criminal power structures. To become more effective in this respect, it is important to identify criminal money flows at the earliest possible stage and then intercept them. Payments are moving faster and faster and are not bound by borders. Criminals try to make good use of this when channeling their criminal profits, often abroad.
With the so-called urgent freezing of an unusual transaction, the bill creates a new instrument against money laundering. Due to the emergency freeze, a financial transaction can be canceled at the request of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-the Netherlands) are temporarily held by a bank. This is not yet possible at the moment, which means that the criminal money has often already been channeled away before FIU-the Netherlands has been able to conduct an investigation and then seize the criminal investigation. The urgent freezing option already exists in neighboring countries. It is therefore expected that the new instrument will further promote international cooperation.
Hidden spaces
Criminals are increasingly using hidden spaces in a car, truck or boat for their illegal trade. In 2015, the police, Customs and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee encountered an estimated 150 of these types of vehicles. This has risen to approximately 600 by 2020. Vehicles with a secret space clearly intended for a criminal purpose such as transporting drugs, weapons or criminal money are now being confiscated. But no punishment yet. By prohibiting the possession of such a specially equipped vehicle, enforcement can be done. Building in such a secret space to facilitate crime will also become a punishable offence. Safe storage places with clear legal reasons – for example for the daily profit of a bona fide entrepreneur – do not fall under this penalisation.
Anyone who is guilty of equipping or furnishing a hidden space in a means of transport for criminal purposes and the person who owns such a vehicle will soon face a prison sentence of up to one year under the new bill.