At the end of May-early June, the Task Force-RIEC Brabant-Zeeland contacted the EURIEC regarding a case that had several links with Belgium. The Task Force-RIEC noticed that the subject was known in several municipalities in the Netherlands in relation to criminal activities. As soon as one municipality took action against the subject, the subject moved to another municipality. In that other municipality the same scenario repeated itself. Now the Task Force-RIEC suspected that the subject had moved to Belgium. This would be a clear example of the waterbed effect: the subjects moves to another (foreign) municipality that is less active in the administrative approach of organised crime.
As a result, the Task Force-RIEC contacted the EURIEC with the request to organize a meeting with the relevant Belgian parties and to assess what kind of information the different partners have at their disposal. The next step is to examine whether this information can be shared and with whom. An expert platform was therefore held on 29 June attended by the relevant Belgian and Dutch municipalities, the Belgian local and federal police, the Dutch police and the Dutch tax authorities. Representatives of the ARIEC Limburg and the Taskforce-RIEC were also present.
This was the first expert platform organised by the EURIEC where so many different partners from two different countries came together to discuss the possibilities and impossibilities of information exchange. Since eventually it appeared that this case did not really concern administrative data but rather police and tax data, it was decided to continue the case via the cross-border information exchange options of the police and tax authorities.