HRIF.EU files appeal against AP for failure to make timely decisions on bank dragnet enforcement
The Human Rights in Finance.EU foundation today filed a formal appeal against the Personal Data Authority for failing to issue a timely decision on a complaint about the banking dragnet. Despite repeated requests, evidence of unlawful processing of special personal data, and a formal notice of default, the AP just won't take a decision. But this really can't wait any longer.
Human Rights in Finance.EU 26 May 2025
The complaint concerns the processing of 407 transactions of our chairman, including 112 with sensitive information (medical, religious, political), shared through Transaction Monitoring Netherlands (TMNL). Meanwhile, this processing has effectively ended - not due to intervention by the AP or DNB, not out of
self-understanding banks about its punishability, but
due to legal pressure from HRIF.EU.
Finance not apologizing but enthusiastically pushing for restart of human rights violations by 2026?
AP's failure to enforce is all the more distressing
now that the Ministry of Finance on May 14 announced its intention to restart joint monitoring of banking transactions starting in 2026 - with no legal basis, no fundamental rights test, and no lessons learned.
This is in direct contradiction to what would be morally and legally the correct route: an apology by Finance, DNB, NVB, FIU, TMNL and banks for violating privacy and processing special personal data in violation of the AVG without the law. We have called on the Ministry to do this behind the scenes, but the response in government policy is clear. Any awareness of fundamental rights and mention of the General Data Protection Regulation is not to be found in it.
The balance is completely off in the Netherlands. Money laundering has been used as an argument for far-reaching surveillance for twenty years without any hard evidence. The government now pretends that the AVG simply does not exist and wants to anticipate the new EU rules with new illegal transaction monitoring, but wants to wait a very long time before switching to an efficient suspicious transaction reporting structure. That signal is clear. Like to fill as many data pots as possible and as little AVG as possible.
This is not as it should be and in order for the op supervisors to refuse to take responsibility, we are taking the matter to court. We wrote about this earlier an article: where the OM threatens and the AP remains silent, the banks will continue to violate the AVG and AI Act. We might add: and the government, FIU and DNB themselves enthusiastically participate in those AVG violations and are proud of it too by the looks of it.
The solution is clear: the AP needs to follow through with hefty enforcement now. On the one hand as punishment for not acknowledging/correcting past mistakes, but on the other hand as a safeguard to prevent banks from actually continuing down the wrong path again in 2026. That is the background to the appeal filed today.
