ABN Amro will pass on the costs incurred by the company to carry out the mandatory money laundering checks to coffee shops that have a business account with the bank. As of January 1, the rates for the affected account holders will increase to 110 euros per month. Previously, coffee shop owners paid an average of 9.90 euros per month for a payment package at the bank. The bank has that on Thursday announced.
About 250 coffee shops arrange their banking via ABN. The bank says it does not expect that they will switch to another bank as a result of the increase. The spokesperson could not say whether the bank charges for other sectors will also increase at a later date. The rules that have been introduced nationally and internationally to prevent financial crime have cost ABN more than 1 billion euros in the past three years.
ABN is the first bank in the Netherlands to charge the costs of money laundering checks to Dutch account holders. A year ago, the bank already decided that business accounts of foreign customers would be significantly more expensive, to cover part of the costs of control obligations on these banking products. That decision affected about three thousand customers in about one hundred countries.
In April, ABN paid 480 million euros to the Public Prosecution Service (OM), because it did not do enough for years to get a picture of possible criminal money flows. The Public Prosecution Service is still investigating whether three former ABN executives, including former Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm, should be prosecuted for their role in violating anti-money laundering legislation. In 2018, a settlement in a similar money laundering case cost ING 775 million euros.
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