The Regulation on Supervision pursuant to the Sanctions Act 1977 (Regeling toezicht Sanctiewet 1977) imposes further requirements on supervised institutions. Crypto service providers must check whether their clients and any ultimate beneficiary owners (UBOs) are on a Dutch or European sanctions list and report any hits to DNB.
Risk-based checks are not permitted. Under Dutch and EU sanction rules, no funds may be made available to individuals or entities that are on a sanctions list. Institutions can determine on a risk-basis the frequency with which they check existing clients that were screened during onboarding.
Sw compliance also entails that institutions must check incoming and outgoing payment transfers, and block and report them to DNB in the event of a hit.
Some European regulations prohibit firms from cooperating in the transportation of embargo goods to sanctioned countries, for example by facilitating a transaction or providing a financial service. This means institutions facilitating transactions to sanctioned countries must be keenly aware of this.
In the event of an actual hit in a sanctions list, the institution must immediately notify DNB, as well as freeze any assets, block the transaction, or do both. Accordingly, assets may not be released to any other, non-sanctioned, party. FIU-NL must also be notified in specific cases.
Non-compliance with the provisions adopted in or pursuant to the Sw, which may include international sanctions regimes, is punishable under the Economic Offences Act.
Sanctions Act
DNB provides a great deal of information on the Sanctions Act, the sanctions lists and the reporting procedure on its Open Book on Supervision web pages and in its Guidance on the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Act and the Sanctions Act. DNB also distributes regular updates on the various sanctions regimes via Twitter and email.
