Recital 102

(102) Member States currently have a diverse range of pecuniary sanctions and administrative measures for breaches of the key preventative provisions in place and an inconsistent approach to investigating and sanctioning violations of anti-money laundering requirements. Moreover, there is no common understanding among supervisors as to what should constitute a ‘serious’ violation and thus they cannot readily discern when a pecuniary sanction should be imposed. That diversity is detrimental to the efforts made in combating money laundering and terrorist financing and the Union’s response is fragmented. Therefore, common criteria for determining the most appropriate supervisory response to breaches should be laid down and a range of administrative measures that the supervisors could apply to remedy breaches, whether in combination with pecuniary sanctions or, when the breaches are not sufficiently serious to be punished with a pecuniary sanction, on their own, should be provided. In order to incentivise obliged entities to comply with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, it is necessary to strengthen the dissuasive nature of pecuniary sanctions. Accordingly, the minimum amount of the maximum penalty that can be imposed in the case of serious breaches of Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 should be raised. In transposing this Directive, Member States should ensure that the imposition of pecuniary sanctions and application of administrative measures, and the imposition of criminal sanctions in accordance with national law, does not breach the principle of ne bis in idem.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-09-04 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.