PHILIPSBURG, Sint Maarten — Those in charge of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (OM) BES, the Dutch Caribbean Police Force (KPCN), the Recherche Samenwerkings Team (RST), the Koninklijke Marechaussee (KMar), the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIUBES), the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service and the Afpakteam (Asset Recovery Team) Curaçao have signed a covenant on March 19th , 2018 on Bonaire.
The covenant was necessary to strengthen the joint approach of financial economic crime on the BES-islands. This covenant intensifies the information exchange between the services, in order to be able to act together more strongly against financial economic crime. Fraud, property fraud and money laundering on the BES islands can now be combated more effectively in this way.
Clear agreements have been made with this covenant in which employees of the services can actually carry out investigations in response to signals of fraud and money laundering. When tackling these crimes, the services often have to look for themselves. There are no direct victims of money laundering and the characteristic of fraud is that you do not immediately see on the outside that there is an illegal construction and false invoices.
There are very few reports of this type of crime. That is why cooperation is so important: only by reporting to each other when a service sees something strange and combining it with information from other authorities, fraud can be brought to light. With this covenant this step is taken and money launderers and fraudsters are therefore significantly more likely to run into the lights.
The intention is to increasingly seek cooperation with non-governmental parties in the fight against financial malpractice.
On the picture from left to right: Tamara van Mierloo on behalf of the KMar, Michiel Marchand on behalf of KPCN, Henry Hambeukers, on behalf of OM BES, Nichalin Martina on behalf of the Belastingdienst Caribisch Nederland (CN) and Hans van de Vlist on behalf of FIOD Nederland
