Detecting Financial Crime

To make society safer

The mission of our Detecting Financial Crime/Customer Due Diligence department is to make society safer by detecting criminal money. Our department brings together all activities related to detecting financial crime. That is why we want to know who our customers are. If we know our clients well, we automatically know what their motivations and goals are and are we therefore able to intervene if it turns out that ABN AMRO is being misused for money laundering, fraud or terrorist financing.

Money laundering

'Money laundering' means that a criminal carries out financial transactions to disguise the illegal origin of the money. For example, a criminal who has earned a million euros in cash in drug or human trafficking can of course use this dark money to pay for his groceries with cash every day in the supermarket, but this does entail many restrictions. Just think of all the shops that have switched to only accepting debit card payments in recent years. This criminal gets rid of his money faster if he pays his dream house in cash, but that is not accepted by any buyer and probably immediately reported to the police. So, if such a criminal really wants to live on his criminal money, he must try to 'place' that money in the legal economy. In this way the trace to the illegal origin is obscured.

What does your work at ABN AMRO entail?

Of the 6.6 billion transactions that Dutch banks process every year, only a small part consists of criminal transactions. We do everything we can to find those transactions. Through research we get to know the customer even better and in doing so we recognize transactions that fall outside the standard transaction patterns. We follow traces that may indicate increased risk, analyse documents and check every detail carefully. Of course, you also have conversations with stakeholders. And if there is an increased risk as a result of our risk analysis, we take action. In this way we ensure that society becomes a bit safer every day.