National Risk Assessment on Money Laundering for the Netherlands

Abstract

Dutch policy to prevent and combat money laundering is based on the recommen-dations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and EU directives and regulations. The FATF - an intergovernmental body set up by the G7 in 1989 - focuses on global prevention of money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system. The majority of the FATF’s recommendations has been adopted into the fourth EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive, applicable to all EU member states. In short, Article 7 of this directive obliges EU member states to implement a risk-based policy against money laundering and terrorist financing and to establish a National Risk Assessment (NRA).The goal of this NRA is to identify the ten most significant risks relating to money laun-dering in terms of their potential impact and to assess the ‘resilience’ of the policy instruments designed to prevent and combat money laundering. Resilience entails the functioning of policy instruments (including legislation), whereby the following is applicable: the greater the resilience, the more the risks are combatted. This initial NRA also describes a number of lessons learned that could be taken into account in the process of subsequent NRAs.