The year 2024 marked the first full year of activity for HRIF.EU. In February 2024, we opened a bank account, conducted various transactions monitored by five joint banks and Transaction Monitoring Netherlands (TMNL), and managed to halt this monitoring through legal pressure, publicity, and arguments. However, none of this would have been possible without your support as the public.
We have recently finalized our financial statements, and a summary of our income and expenses for 2024 is presented below. We would like to express our gratitude to the numerous donors, customers, organizations, whistleblowers, and individuals who have supported us in safeguarding human rights in economic transactions.
Looking ahead to 2025, we anticipate significant developments, particularly concerning police files and compliance with legal requirements. Our goal for this year is to expedite the transition to a system focusing on monitoring suspicious transactions and ending the dragnet approach to unusual transactions within the FIU’s vast goAML system.
In the Netherlands, unlike anywhere else in Europe, we search for unusual transactions, with the FIU declaring them suspicious and sharing data overly enthusiastically. This approach is not only disproportionate but also entirely outside the legal framework (just as the collective monitoring at TMNL was fully unlawful).
Why is the FIU not allowed to declare transactions suspicious?
We won’t burden you with a long and technical explanation. Slide 58 of a 2022 Dutch speech by our Chairman provides detailed insights for those interested. In essence, while the EU mandates that designated private institutions report suspicious transactions to the FIU, in the Netherlands, institutions report a far wider range of unusual transactions, and the FIU itself determines what is suspicious, which is not permitted under EU rules. The FIU can only receive suspicious transaction reports, not create them.
This fundamental error in Dutch law/tansposition has led to excessive reporting of over 2 million unusual transactions, which the FIU formally cannot process under EU Law Enforcement Directive. The misalignment between our national regulations and EU directives is a costly mistake, resulting in unnecessary damage and discrimination, prompting us to repeat our call for an immediate shift to a system that reports only suspicious transactions.
Our Advice to Banks, the FIU, and Parliament: Immediately Transition to a System for Reporting Suspicious Transactions
On February 6, 2024, we visited the Dutch Parliament to present a petition on behalf of nearly 15,000 clients and ten interest groups, explaining that outsourcing transaction monitoring to TMNL was inappropriate and advocating for a swift transition to the EU system of suspicious transaction reporting. We have achieved the first goal, thanks in part to repeated parliamentary attention, and we will continue to pursue the second.
We won’t return to Parliament with the same petition again. It’s content is still valid. And past experiences have shown that ministries provide evasive and inaccurate briefings. Similar misrepresentations occurred with the unlawful transaction monitoring of banks via TMNL. Therefore, we are launching a new publicity campaign, emphasizing our urgent call for an immediate transition to reporting suspicious transactions. We now await whether the government and market parties will again resort to legal procedures. Legally, our Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) is acting against the EU Law Enforcement Directive.
For the enthousiasts/compliance professionals: Why the Dutch FIU’s data processing lacks legal title and why reporting institutions may only send in suspicious transaction reports (and not more)
If you are a compliance professional in the field in the Netherlands. Please do the legal math (or check ours below) and go to your supervisor. Explain them there is no downside in stopping the reporting of unusual transactions. Only subjective/suspicious transactions are in the remit of the FIU to be received. We will explain here.
When transposing the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) into Dutch law, the principles of higher law were violated in the Netherlands, and the Law Enforcement Directive was insufficiently respected. Under the AMLD The FIU should only receive and process suspicious transaction reports (STRs), not determine or declare transactions to be suspicios themselves. In addition, the FIU’s current practices of data matching with other organisations amount to illegal tipping-off under Article 22 of the Dutch AML law (Wwft). Thus the FIU must immediately cease automated matching of unusual transactions and remove all objective transaction reports from their database. The FIU’s role should be limited to processing only STRs from institutions based on a higher standard of suspicion. And institutions may only send in STRs as sending in unusual transactions is in contradiction with the AMLD and LED.
This transition to a new method can be achieved quickly and without a lot of changes within the existing goAML and reporting system. Institutions just stop sending objective unusual transactions and use the unusual transaction record only for suspicious transactions from now on. What remains to be done is that only the data fields of article 16 of the Wwft are included and all other data (name of the sending employee, adress of subjects, etc etc) are taken out as not strictly necessary and without legal title.
And do bear in mind. The FIU or institution that continues to work the old school Dutch wrong way technically committs or assists FIU in committing a cybercrime under Article 138c of the Dutch Penal Code as the FIU is not authorised to receive anything else than suspicious transaction reports.
Would you believe it: one suspicious transaction report per minute, all done by one person?
The sheer irrationality of the Dutch system is that in a formal legal way, there is exclusively just one person in the Netherlands that declares transactions suspicious. This is the head of the FIU and it is an exclusive and personal role, not to be delegated. So the law says. Now with 180.000 transactions being declared suspicious every year, this means the official needs to work 8 hours a day, 365 days and declares one transaction suspicious per minute. Does that add up? Is this physically possible?
Of course not. Half of the declarations of something being suspicious are automatic profiling and matching without any further research done. And then a lot of work is not done by the official as a person. So even within our incorrect translation/transposition of the EU-rules on reporting suspicious transactions, we do not abide with our own wrong law.
Meanwhile, the automated declarations of some transactions being suspicious leads to harm for citizens and companies alike. Scientific research and literature outlines how the automated matching with tickets for speeding and other databases at the police go unchecked. If someone is investigated but not guilty, the police doesn’t remove the suspicion ever. And the Audit reports of the police are outlining that in terms of policy, operations and governance, the controls of the work of the Police/FIU are insufficient. It’s a big red flag.
Work for 2025: stop the FIU dragnet of unusual transaction reports and the automated matching system
Well, that’s our assignment for this year. Kick out this second illegal dragnet, just like we kicked out the banks illegal dragnet that monitored 10 billion transactions per year, including sensitive personal data.
And now you, as a reader, may better understand why some of us in the Netherlands aren’t able to pass customs when they go on holiday. Somewhere in this Dutch secret sauce machine, transactions are flagged as suspicious, persons are flagged without being able to know it, have their information removed or being able to check it. And then one day in summer, your holiday ends prematurely at the airport.
So, ae you with us on this matter? And are you willing to support our foundation to help kick out this second dragnet as well? Do feel free to send a donation to the account number that you can find on our website. Or otherwise do help out by spreading the word of our existance and our work to end this second dragnet soon.
Thanks !