The government and banks will make it more difficult for car dealers to deposit large amounts of cash. There is still a lot of cash involved in the trade in (ex) leased cars.
International drug gangs in particular buy up second-hand lease cars en masse and then resell them abroad in order to launder their drug money. The Telegraph. The newspaper cites an example of a Lebanese drug syndicate that settled almost 10 million euros worth of cars in cash in Hoogeveen a few years ago.
Until recently, it was generally assumed that cash and used cars simply belong together. Unjustly, the newspaper writes, because no cash has been accepted in the regular car trade for some time.
Trade in old lease containers brings an enormous flow of cash into the country. Research by the Financial Expertise Center (FEC) shows that more than 1 billion euros in banknotes have been deposited at banks in the past four years.
‘Destroying the route’
Tamara Pollard, a money laundering specialist at the Anti Money Laundering Center (AMLC) and leader of the FEC investigation, told the newspaper that she is “busy destroying this route”. By this she means depositing cash at banks.
For example, it appears that some traders do not deposit money themselves, but have the cash collected by a security transport company. They deposit it at their own bank, which then transfers it to the car dealer’s bank.
“Until recently, however, the transaction was not classified as a cash deposit at that last step, nor was it reported whether there were, for example, 500 notes in between, an important indicator of money laundering,” Pollard told the newspaper. “The information about deposits is now shared between banks and, if necessary, reported as an unusual transaction to the money laundering police.”
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