The Netherlands faces a growing threat from organized crime that is silently corroding state institutions, public services, and democratic governance, according to a new threat assessment published Tuesday by the Strategic Knowledge Center for Subversive Crime.

The report, which describes the phenomenon as “concrete rot in the foundations of society,” identifies five escalating threats through which criminal networks are embedding themselves in Dutch public life. Criminal syndicates are increasingly stepping in to fill gaps left by the state, offering housing, protection, loans, and prescription medicines to citizens who cannot access them through legitimate channels, the governmental organization said. 

The assessment also warns of a “spreading oil slick” of criminal recruitment, with young people being enlisted for criminal work at secondary schools and, in some cases, primary schools. Beyond youth, the report flags the systematic targeting of professionals in valued positions, including civil servants, entrepreneurs, and other gatekeepers. 

Criminal networks have separately developed intelligence-gathering capabilities comparable to those of state security services, using corruption brokers and systematic social media surveillance to identify and exploit such vulnerabilities as debt, addiction, and family problems among port workers, civil servants, and local politicians, the report concluded. 

More than 100 municipal integrity violations were recorded across 342 Dutch local authorities between 2020 and 2022, and a court employee at the Amsterdam district court was arrested in March 2025 on suspicion of selling case data to criminal contacts over an extended period. Half of Dutch judges and prosecutors surveyed by investigative platform Investico reported having faced threats in their work, frequently from organized crime, with some declining major assignments, handling cases anonymously, or quietly leaving the profession. 

The assessment also documents a laundering ecosystem that has outpaced the institutions designed to police it. Criminal networks now combine traditional banking with underground banking, cryptocurrency platforms, NFTs, and the so-called “daigou” model, in which criminal funds are converted into luxury goods in Europe, smuggled to China, and sold there, with proceeds returned via underground banking. 

The ease of registering shell companies in the Netherlands means structures involving hundreds of legal entities at a single address are routinely used to defeat asset recovery.

In a statement, Justice Minister Van Weel said the report upends the idea of a separate criminal underworld. The so-called criminal “underworld” no longer exists because it is everywhere, he said, warning that prosperous, well-developed infrastructure makes the Netherlands especially attractive to criminal exploitation.