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The 53-year-old Albanian Thanas Bako, who ran the largest underground bank ever discovered in the Netherlands, appears before the court.
He managed a large amount of money. With it, criminals in the Netherlands could withdraw or deposit money and then get paid in another country.
In less than a year, half a billion euros, proceeds of crime, would pass through his hands.
Such underground bankers are essential in the criminal circle. A large part of the global drug trade passes through this system.
For example, anyone who wants to transfer a million euros from the Netherlands to Colombia to buy cocaine can hand over their "cash" to an undercover banker. He arranges with a colleague in Colombia to pay a million there.
Contact is often made through specific money brokers. Bankers keep track of who owes whom and how much. Money crosses the border only on paper, physically it remains in your country. Therefore, an underground bank is basically a large stock of money, where sometimes something is added and sometimes something goes out. Bankers and money brokers live off the commission they get from their criminal clients.
Since 2021, the police and the Public Prosecutor's Office have been trying to undermine this parallel banking system. The goal is to disrupt the drug trade by making it harder for criminals to move their money.
"In the Netherlands, it is estimated that this amounts to more than one billion euros a year," says Peter Huttenhuis, the national prosecutor who investigates the proceeds of crime.
Several secret bankers have recently been arrested in the Netherlands. The investigation into the Thanas B. group is the largest to date. "He is seen as a key figure in a European banking network," says Huttenhuis.
Thanas B. is said to have managed money couriers in the Netherlands from Athens. These couriers worked as handymen, painters or window cleaners, usually with clean criminal records to avoid being noticed as much as possible. For a hefty fee, they used their vans to transport money to and from criminal clients.
The police saw how the couriers received or sent bags full of money. Sometimes it was several thousand euros, sometimes millions. According to the Public Prosecution, under the direction of Thanas B. a total of over 246 million euros were collected and almost 248 million euros were paid.
To prove that money has actually been transferred, 'tokens' are used. This can be, for example, a 5 euro banknote with a certain serial number. Only the person in possession of that specific note can collect or deliver the money.
According to the Prosecution, the underground bank of Thanas B. had two 'offices'. These were warehouses in Wateringen and Nieuw-Vennep where the money was counted and hidden.
According to the Public Prosecution, the intercepted messages show that B. kept a record of how much he entered and how much he left. He talked to his contacts about the money that needed to be "collected" and "delivered".
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