Europe's new anti-money laundering watchdog is moving to overhaul how national financial intelligence units share information, in a bid to end the patchwork system that currently governs the exchange of data on suspicious cross-border transactions.
The European Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) on Tuesday launched a public consultation on draft regulatory technical standards that would introduce a common EU framework for identifying and handling money laundering cases spanning multiple member states. The proposal is designed to address a longstanding problem in the bloc's financial crime architecture: each national Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) currently applies its own criteria when deciding whether and how to share intelligence with counterparts elsewhere in the EU.
According to AMLA, this fragmented approach has produced two equally problematic outcomes. In some cases, authorities exchange excessive amounts of information, including personal data that may not be necessary. In others, critical intelligence is not shared quickly enough, creating gaps in Europe's defences against money laundering and terrorist financing.
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At the centre of the reform is a new division of responsibilities between the authority sending the information and the one receiving it. Under the proposed system, an FIU that identifies a suspicious transaction with cross-border elements would initially transmit only a limited set of core information to its counterpart in another member state. The receiving authority would then determine whether the information is relevant to its own investigations and decide whether to request the full case file.
The change effectively shifts responsibility for assessing the operational value of information from the sending country to the receiving one. AMLA argues that the authority on the receiving end is usually better placed to know whether a person, company or transaction is linked to ongoing investigations, organised crime networks, individuals already under scrutiny or risks previously identified in its domestic system.
In practical terms, if Greece's Financial Intelligence Unit were to receive information from another European counterpart concerning a company with bank accounts in Greece, it would be up to the Greek authorities to determine whether that company is connected to ongoing tax evasion investigations, smuggling networks or individuals already being monitored by law enforcement agencies. If the information is deemed operationally significant, Greece could then request the complete case file.
The new framework, however, stops short of giving national authorities unlimited discretion. AMLA is proposing a three-tier accountability mechanism aimed at monitoring how information is exchanged and ensuring that decisions are properly justified.
First, all exchanges would be recorded on FIU.net, the secure communications platform used by Europe's financial intelligence units. The system would create a complete digital audit trail showing which authority sent information, which authority received it, whether additional details were requested and how the case subsequently evolved, allowing regulators to review authorities' behaviour retrospectively.
Second, the proposal introduces common assessment criteria and scorecards intended to reduce reliance on subjective judgments. FIUs would be required to use standardised risk indicators, including links to other investigations, the nature of the suspected underlying offence, the value of transactions and connections to sanctions or other suspicious activities. Authorities would also have to justify their decisions based on those indicators.
Third, the framework envisages indirect oversight by other European FIUs and by AMLA itself. Authorities that repeatedly fail to request information in cases later shown to be significant, or that routinely seek excessive amounts of data without sufficient justification, could be identified through evaluations, inspections and supervisory reviews carried out under the EU's new anti-money laundering framework.
The proposal is one of the first major attempts by AMLA to impose a common operating model on Europe's fragmented anti-money laundering regime, signalling a shift toward greater central coordination and closer scrutiny of how national authorities cooperate in tackling financial crime across the bloc.
