Special investigators from the finance ministry’s fraud office are looking into ‘possible criminal offences’ with regard to property projects carried out by SNS Reaal’s Property Finance unit.

Over the past few weeks, Fiod officials have interviewed a number of people involved in the projects and taken away documents, the Financieele Dagblad said.

A spokesman for SNS said the company was cooperating fully with the investigation ‘because we think integrity is important’.

The public prosecution department has declined to comment.

Last month, the NRC reported that SNS Reaal had its doubts about some projects at its property arm and had asked forensic accounting specialists to examine 14 developments in detail.

Problems were identified at all 14 projects, ranging from suspected money laundering to bank staff negligence, the paper said.