Introduction

What is Money laundering?
Money laundering is the process by which criminals attempt to conceal the illegal origin of the proceeds of their criminal activity (drug dealing, weapons dealing, human trafficking, kidnapping, etc.) allowing them to maintain control over the proceeds and ultimately, providing a legitimate cover for their sources of income.

What is terrorism financing?
Contrary to money laundering where the origin of the proceeds come solely from illegal activities, terrorists organizations also raise funding from legitimate sources, including the abuse of charitable entities or legitimate businesses. Terrorists use a wide variety of methods to move money within and between organizations, including the financial sector, the non-financial sector, cash couriers and the movement of goods through the trade system.
Financing of terrorism is described as a behaviors as referred to in the International Treaty of New York with regard to combating terrorism financing, signed on December 9^th, 1999(Tractatenblad 2000, no. 12; Tractatenblad 2002, no. 110)

Why should we act against money laundering and the financing of terrorism?
Together with the Netherlands and Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles take part in the work of the Financial Action Task Force on money laundering, (the FATF). The FATF, is an inter-governmental organization which sets standards, develops and promotes policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The member states are obliged to incorporate the recommendations of the FAFT in their national legislation.

The recommendations cover among others:
International co-operation including mutual legal assistance and extradition;
Measures to be taken by financial institutions and non-financial businesses and professions to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism, including:
-customer due diligence and record keeping
-reporting of unusual transactions to a FIU or MOT

Countermeasures are taken against member states that do not comply with the FATF’s recommendations. These countermeasures include among others: warning the different sectors against doing business with non-compliant countries, because of the danger of money laundering or the financing of terrorism and the limiting of both business relations as well as financial transactions with non-compliant countries. The objective of these countermeasures is to maintain and protect the integrity of the financial system in the FATF countries. Therefore the Sint Maarten is compelled to uphold the integrity of their financial systems. In doing this, criminal persons and/or organizations are prevented to misuse the Sint Maartens financial system to launder money or to finance terrorism. Sint Maartens is also a member of the Caribbean counterpart of the FATF; the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, the CFATF.

The laws and legislation's which where written for the Netherlands Antilles remained relevant for Country Sint Maarten even after the Netherlands Antilles
was dissolved as per 10-10-10 . They will continue to remain in effect until revisions are made if so required.
As new Legislation , laws or ordinance are published which pertain to the reporting of unusual transactions they will be publish on this website.
Reporting of Unusual Transactions are made they will be posted on the web site.

Legislation's, ordinances were written and published to ensure that both the financial and non financial institions were informed of there obligation to report any unsusal transactions and the consequence of not reporting unusual transaction.
The ordinance are located under the legislation web page.