Samenvatting

Do drug traffickers have suspicious transactions? In answer to this question, 13,159 individuals registered with the police as drug trafficking suspects were matched with the Financial Intelligence Unit-Netherlands. It turns out that 21.9% of drug suspects is registered with one or more suspicious transactions. Just like the legal world, there is ‘wealth’ inequality. The top 10% is responsible for 84% (395 million euros) of the total amount in suspicious transactions. The results show that measuring the effectiveness of the reporting chain needs a nuanced approach which gives weight to an individual’s number of transactions, amount involved and time period.