Subversive crime

Publication date 27-02-2025, 14:25 | Last update 27-02-2025, 14:27

Crime can undermine society. Think of laundering criminal money. Or corruption where people are bribed. Together with other organisations, the FIOD tackles criminal networks to combat subversive crime.

What is subversive crime?

Subversive crime occurs when crime uses and influences society. This includes:

• Fraud with real estate, government subsidies or shares.
• Owners or tenants who use or allow properties to be used for, for example, the production of drugs or the trade in weapons.
• Homes at holiday parks that criminals use for, for example, illegal prostitution or drug trafficking.
• Banks, insurers or financial advisers who help launder money to conceal its illegal origin.

Blending the underworld with legitimate business.

Subversive crime often includes bribery or extortion. Criminals undermine the authority of public servants and executives in this way. Additionally, someone can be pressured to allow a shipment of drugs to pass through undetected. This allows moral values in society to become blurred. Both the quality of life and safety decrease because the underworld and legitimate businesses become intertwined.

FIOD approach against subversive crime

The FIOD works together with many different organisations to combat subversive crime, for example in the National Multidisciplinary Intervention Team (MIT). Within this team, hundreds of experts from six organisations work together to disrupt criminal networks and their business processes. In addition to the FIOD, these are:

• The Netherlands Tax Authority
• Customs
• Royal Netherlands Military Constabulary (Border Police)
• National Police
• Public Prosecution Service (OM)

The FIOD focuses on:

• money flows connected to subversive crime;
• identifying patterns in (financial) data;
• tracing criminals who want to use criminal assets in society.

The ultimate goal is: to trace criminal assets and confiscate them so that crime does not pay.

Reporting unusual financial transactions

Institutions and professions with the obligation to monitor transactions have to report unusual financial transactions to the Finance Intelligence Unit Netherlands (FIU-Netherlands). FIU-Netherlands shares that information with the National Police and the FIOD.