Dutch coffee shops at ABN AMRO will pay eleven times as much for their business accounts as before.
From January 1st, the third largest bank in the country will charge you 110 euros per month instead of 9.90 euros.
According to its own information, it passes on part of the costs that have arisen due to stricter official requirements for the control of customers and their money flows.
Last year, ABN AMRO made business accounts more expensive for foreign customers for the same reason.
Klaus Max Smolka
Editor in business.
Follow I follow
About 250 coffee shops are affected.
The industry is one of those sectors that, according to the official definition, should be high-risk industries for money laundering and crime financing.
The bank leaves it open whether ABN AMRO will also increase fees in other sectors.
"That is not on the agenda now," said a spokesman on request.
It cannot be ruled out for the future.
Other banks no longer open new business accounts from such sectors.
Criticism not only from the coffee shop industry
The ABN-AMRO spokesman mentions the following questions that are relevant to the bank's general monitoring obligation: What kind of customer is it? What is his story? Are there still parties behind the account owner? Are the flows of money unsuspicious? Controlling this causes different amounts of effort depending on the customer, the bank claims. In this respect, a clothing store in Nieuwegein is not the same as a large coffee shop in Amsterdam.
In fact, the financial institutions in the country have more and more expenses because of legal requirements, namely as a result of the "Law to Prevent Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism" (Wwft). In April, ABN AMRO agreed to a payment of 480 million euros because the public prosecutor's office accused the institute of “years of structural damage” to the Wwft.
The domestic industry leader ING, known in Germany through its subsidiary called "Diba" until recently, had to hear from the public prosecutor that customers had misused ING accounts in the Netherlands for money laundering for years "almost undisturbed".
The institute agreed with the judiciary on a settlement payment of 775 million euros.
To avoid this, the big banks are now making enormous efforts: Thousands of jobs have been created for monitoring programs with names like KYC (“Know Your Customer”).
Easy loot?
Criticism of ABN AMRO's latest decision does not only come from the coffee shop industry. Bob Hoogenboom, lecturer at Nyenrode Business Universiteit, calls the campaign “cheap”. "Coffee shops are legal and have a legitimate function in society," he is quoted in the newspaper de Volkskrant. Problems cannot be denied, but coffee shops are easy prey. “On the other hand, structural forms of crime are not approached with the same attention and devotion.” According to the newspaper, with the latter he aimed at offenses against trust offices, tax advisors, auditors and notaries.
With the new fee, Dutch coffee shops are now on a par with ABN-AMRO customers who have foreign business accounts.
They have been paying 110 euros a month since the beginning of the year - and even 270 euros outside the European Economic Area (EU, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein).
ABN AMRO also argues with greater effort here - including the fact that laws in three categories must be observed: international, Dutch and those in the respective country of origin of the customer.
The increase affected around 3,000 customers in more than a hundred countries.