Abstract
The main question of this PhD thesis is whether for legal and fiscal service providers, the Dutch anti-money laundering reporting duty that is based on the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act[1] (hereafter: Wwft) and its enforcement meet the principles of legal certainty, legal privilege, effectiveness and equivalence. This
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study starts with an introductory chapter and has four subsequent parts: the normative framework (Part I), the anti-money laundering reporting duty (Part II), enforcement (Part III) and conclusions and recommendations (Part IV). Part I Chapters 2 and 3 contain the normative framework. These chapters describe legal certainty, legal privilege, effectiveness and equivalence as principles of good enforcement. Chapter 3 describes legal privilege in more detail and studies the extent to which the confidential relationship between practising lawyers (advocaten) and their clients, is protected in case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the European Court of Justice and the Dutch Hoge Raad. Part II Chapter 4 shows that the scope of the Money Laundering Directive has been substantially extended over time. Chapter 5 analyses the implementation of the anti-money laundering reporting duty and the legal-privilege exemption that are based on the Third Money Laundering Directive for legal and fiscal service providers in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and England and Wales.Chapter 6 analyses how the legal-privilege exemption of the Third Money Laundering Directive should be interpreted with regard to practising lawyers, civil-law notaries, accountants and other legal and fiscal service providers, in order to comply with the criteria of protection of legal privilege, effectiveness, legal certainty and equivalence. Chapter 7 addresses a number of obscurities regarding the content and scope of the Wwft reporting duty for legal and fiscal service providers. Part III Chapter 8 is an introduction, offering an overview of the various existing systems of supervision of the various professions, the Dutch government’s views on this and the current developments regarding the supervision of civil-law notaries and practising lawyers. Chapter 9 analyses the external Wwft supervision by the Bureau Financial Supervision (hereafter: BFT). Chapter 10 describes the internal Wwft supervision by the KNB and the president of the notarial disciplinary court. Chapter 11 describes the internal Wwft supervision of practising lawyers, analysing it according to the principles of legal certainty, legal privilege, effectiveness and equivalence, and discusses proposals to enhance supervision. Chapter 12 discusses the internal Wwft supervision by the professional organisations of accountants and tax advisors. Chapter 13 shows that currently the disciplinary sanctions of the Wwft are not legally certain, not effective and not equivalent to the administrative sanctions through the Wwft regime and the Financial Supervision Act. Part IV The final chapter, Chapter 14, presents the conclusions and recommendations for each profession separately. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1]Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme
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