I would agree that the laws surrounding money laundering and terrorism financing in the EU are pretty heavy handed. An example: a financial firm is to check th

I would agree that the laws surrounding money laundering and terrorism financing in the EU are pretty heavy handed. An example: a financial firm is to check the UBO (ultimate benificiary owner, i.e. the real person involved) at the other end of the deal, for all counterparties. You also should check for PEPs (politically exposed persons), which can be all kinds of things (think family members of notorious regimes). The thing is, for terrorism governments supply watchlists, for PEPs they don't. So most institutions use PEP-lists that they procure elsewhere, but don't really manage. So that's where funny things happen. These are laws where compliance is pretty hard to do guarantee. In this case you getting a €20k financing from a UK-firm, with a (his responses are now downmodded, but that part was probably true) UBO that is pretty mindfull of his privacy and the whereabouts of his money you can't follow. You use that money to finance a particular Russian contractor, via a Dutch foundation. I don't think being compliant should be awefully hard, although it would entail some work. Note that the compliancy should fall on the bank, accountant and perhaps notary involved. I just added the reply to give Boudewijn a heads-up to be mindful. All of this doesn't stop Dutch banks from financing coffeeshops with their roots massively in the locally illegal growing of cannabis. So go figure about the impact of these laws...