A senior AMLA board member has issued a stark warning about the scale of money laundering in Europe and the step-change in standards that is coming. Here is what compliance leaders must act on now.

The Situation at a Glance

The executive board member of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) of the EU, Derville Rowland, addressed the national payments conference in Dublin of the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, saying that Europe was receiving a dirty money flow of 750 billion dollars, including about 647 billion euros annually. The number is calculated based on a 2023 Nasdaq Verafin report and comes to 2.3 per cent of the total GDP in Europe.

The sum is huge: 178 billion dollars in drug trafficking, 82.2 billion dollars in human trafficking, 2.7 billion dollars terrorist funding and 487.2 billion dollars in organised crime, fraud and corruption. More than a quarter of this activity moves across national boundaries, and Europe manages almost a quarter of all illegal financial flows across the world, even though it represents less than 10 per cent of the global population.

Rowland explained that criminals will quickly embrace technology in criminal activities and cited crime as a service models where hackers rent services and hack into systems. She urged business executives to act today to equip their boards with a significant increase in standards under new EU AML regulations that would come into effect in the coming year.

AMLA: What It Is and What It Will Do

AMLA was founded based on EU Reg. 2024/1620 and started to operate in Frankfurt in July 2025. It will directly oversee about 40 high-risk intercountry financial institutions, such as banks, cryptocurrency providers, starting in 2028, and will organize national supervisors through the FIU.net intelligence platform. It is aimed at consolidating 27 diverse national regimes of AML into one, enforceable framework with a workforce of more than 400 professionals planned by 2027.

The new EU regulations, which will be introduced next year, will prohibit high-value goods payments more than 10,000 euros in cash and increase the control over transactions with cryptocurrencies. AMLA is a major opportunity to international companies long crippled by the divergent national regulations. Legal experts such as Andreas Dehio of Linklaters have described AMLA, but conflicts between the GDPR data protection requirements and the AML data-sharing requirements have not been resolved.

Key Compliance Takeaways

1. Brief Your Board on the Step-Up in Standards.
The message Rowland sent was direct, boards should not be taken by surprise. The compliance teams ought to educate the top management on the agenda of AMLA and the upcoming EU regulations and increased demands on risk evaluations and monitoring efficiency.

2. Update Cash and High-Value Goods Controls.
The outlawing of cash transactions over 10,000 euros on high value commodities means that policy and operational changes are to be made instantly in businesses in luxury commodities, art and real estate industry among others. Change policies, train employees and adjust transaction monitoring settings.

3. Strengthen Cryptocurrency AML Monitoring.
The increased EU control over virtual assets is mentioned as one of the AMLA priorities. Organizations that are exposed to crypto ought to reassess their VASP due diligence models and have them in line with the new demands immediately.

4. Address the GDPR and AML Data Tension.
The conflict between data protection and AML data-sharing requirements is a live compliance risk. Engage legal and data governance teams to map this tension and develop documented positions that can withstand scrutiny from both regulators.

5. Benchmark Against AMLA’s Emerging Standards Now.
Even non-AMLA organizations should consider its technical standards as a pointer of where the entire European AML supervision is moving. Test them to put stress tests on your current compliance posture before the 2028 supervisory regime.