Dina-Perla Portnaar and Michel Klompmaker, Experts at Risk & Compliance Platform Europe 03.03.2021
Fraud
When we talk about combating financial-economic crime, we usually tend to keep our eyes closed to two aspects, namely proportionality and the (political) protection of the stakeholder(s). An example is the commotion around the so-called Bulgarian’s fraud in the Netherlands. Dozens of Eastern-Europeans made use, or misuse if you want, of administrative shortcomings in the allowance system, which has been placed with the Dutch tax authorities. We are talking about several hundred euros per person.
At the same time, tens of billions of euros were flowing and flying across the oceans to tax havens. The same tax authorities adopted a strict formal stance and presupposed the good intentions of dearly paid tax lawyers and civil-law notaries. Obviously paid by ‘neat’ agencies, created by the Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs), but it was often not clear who they actually wer