Client Due Diligence — Wwft & Sanctions ComplianceLegal / Wwft
Wwft policy.
This policy explains the Dutch Wwft — the Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme — and why The McDevitt Company is required to collect client due diligence (CDD) information before providing real estate services. It sets out what we must verify, your rights and obligations, and how long the law requires us to keep this information.
What the Wwft is
The Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme (Wwft) is the Dutch Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act. It transposes the European anti-money-laundering directives into Dutch law and obliges designated institutions — including real estate agents and brokers — to help prevent their services from being misused for money laundering or the financing of terrorism. Compliance is supervised by the Bureau Toezicht Wwft, and unusual transactions must be reported to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-Nederland).
Why we collect due diligence information
As a provider of real estate services, The McDevitt Company qualifies as an institution ("instelling") under the Wwft. Before we enter into a business relationship or carry out a transaction, the law requires us to perform client due diligence. We may not lawfully act for a client until that due diligence is complete, and we must decline or discontinue the engagement if we cannot complete it. This is a legal obligation on us, not a discretionary check.
What the due diligence involves
Client due diligence means identifying and verifying the client and any ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs) who own or control 25% or more of the entity; establishing the purpose and intended nature of the engagement; screening for politically exposed persons (PEPs) and against EU, UN, OFAC and Dutch sanctions lists; and assessing the source of funds. The Wwft is risk-based: where a client, transaction or jurisdiction presents a higher risk, we must apply enhanced due diligence and may request additional documentation. We also monitor the business relationship for as long as it continues.
Your obligations as a client
You are required to provide complete, accurate and up-to-date information, together with valid supporting documents such as company extracts and copies of identity documents for each UBO and signatory. You must inform us promptly of any material change to the information you have given — for example, a change in ownership, control or beneficial owners. We rely on this information to meet our legal duties, and providing false or incomplete information may prevent us from acting for you.
Your rights
You have the right to access the personal data we hold about you and to have inaccurate data corrected. You may also object to processing or request erasure, and EU residents may lodge a complaint with the Dutch supervisory authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens). These rights are exercised under the GDPR and are subject to the Wwft limitations described below. Our full data-processing notice is set out in our Privacy Policy.
Data retention (five years)
Under Article 33 Wwft, we are required to retain client due diligence records — including identification data, UBO information and supporting documents — for at least five years after the end of the business relationship or the completion of the transaction. We keep this data for that statutory period and delete it afterwards, unless a longer retention period is required by another law or an ongoing legal obligation.
Limits on the right to erasure
The right to erasure ("right to be forgotten") does not apply to information we are legally required to keep. Because Article 33 Wwft obliges us to retain your CDD records for at least five years, we cannot delete this data on request during that period, even where you withdraw from the engagement. The statutory retention duty overrides erasure requests for the length of the retention period. Once the period ends and no other legal obligation applies, the data is deleted.
Reporting obligations
The Wwft requires us to report unusual transactions to FIU-Nederland. We are legally prohibited from informing you (the "tipping-off" prohibition) if such a report is made. We carry out this duty independently of the outcome of any transaction and are protected by law when reporting in good faith.
Contact
For questions about our Wwft obligations or this policy, or to exercise your rights in relation to the data we hold, write to compliance@mcdevitt.com.