Considerable differences in tax and excise levels since the Belgium independence in 1830 gave rise to large scale smuggling between the Dutch border province Noord-Brabant en Belgium. The smuggling history can be divided in six periods. Salt was the most important contraband in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. During the First World War a lot of food was smuggled from the Netherlands to Belgium. During the crisis years in the 1930s unemployed people used to supplement their scarce income through smuggling. Belgian tobacco was the most important contraband during the Second World War. After the war ten thousands of Dutch occasional smugglers illegally fetched consumer and luxury goods in Belgium. In the 1950s and 1960s millions of kilo's of Dutch butter were smuggled to Belgium. The smuggling business gradually came into the hands of professional criminal gangs. In the second half of the 1960s the smugglers switched to the illegal distilling of alcohol. Many years later these would evolve into labs for the production of chemical drugs.

The regulation regarding the law enforcement in the new construction of the Netherlands Antilles has to be adapted. The country of the Netherlands Antilles will be divided in three parts: two more or less autonomous countries (Curaçao and Sint Maarten) and the remaining islands (the third part) will fall directly under Dutch rule. In this article special attention is being paid to the law enforcement on the islands (and countries) Curaçao and Sint Maarten. Will it be possible (in the future) for the Dutch Minister of Justice to give guidelines or orders to the prosecution office based in Curaçao and Sint Maarten? It has been agreed that the countries of the Netherlands, Sint Maarten and Curaçao will consult regularly on prosecution policy in order to coordinate their actions. Also a new legal possibility is created for all three Ministers of Justice (including the Dutch minister) to give guidelines or orders to the prosecution, but in special cases only after approval of the Common Court of Justice.

The subjects fraud and corruption play an important role in the recent debate on the constitutional changes within the Netherlands Antilles and the ‘status aparte’ of Curaçao and Sint Maarten. The Netherlands and the various islands keep passing the blame on one another when it comes to fraud and corruption. It seems there is little willingness to look at the underlying causes or to express self-criticism. In this article an attempt is made to outline what is really going on in the field of fraud and corruption in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. Several investigations on fraud and corruption committed by politicians in the past fifteen years will be addressed. Furthermore several socio-cultural, political and economic factors that play a role in causing fraud and corruption are being discussed. In this way the author hopes to contribute to a more constructive debate about the issue of fraud and corruption.