€10m seized in international money laundering bust

The Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service (FIOD) and the police have seized €10 million worth of general goods, property and bank bank balances in an international anti-whitewashing operation. The suspect is a 60-year old man from Rosmalen. The man, who the Public Prosecution Authority (OM) suspects has been whitewashing criminal assets since 2002, has not yet been arrested. The man used a machine trade business as a cover, according to public prosecutor Wil Bollen. "On paper, he delivered machines in various countries. But in truth, it was about money- or drugs transporting." The OM thinks that the suspect kept the criminal assets at foreign trust offices. He pretended as though he had no access to the money, but the OM suspects that he pulled the strings behind the screens. Authorities searched 25 homes and businesses in the Netherlands, Montenegro, Liechtenstein, Spain and Switzerland. It is thought that the investigation may still take another year. Frans de Boer of the FIOD says that these kinds of investigations will happen more often in future. "We are focusing on the upper world, because we see that the hard criminal needs the upper world to run his criminal business. They work on the cutting edge of the underworld and the upper world."