Friday, February 13, 2004

Report of Financial Expertise Centre: charitative foundations do whitewashing...

This report of the Dutch Financial Expertise Centre investigates the role that charitative foundations play in supporting illegal activities. It noted a number of weaknesses in law that allow illegal or suspect behaviour to go unobserved. Among the examples is a church foundation that effectively operated 0900-telephone lines with explicit sexual content. But also it observed that suspect money transfers that previously were done by individuals, are now done via the associations (which do not have members and only have to report if turnover/income is more than 3,5 million euro).



Whereas these observations are disturbing the report notes that what's most disturbing is the likelhood that the research group has definitely only seen the tip of the iceberg. So we have a serious issue here.