The communication of suspicious transactions, which banks and other entities have to do at risk of money laundering, is a “lifting by hand”, not the report of a crime, today the Secretary of State for Tax Affairs has called.
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“It is important to realize that the communication of a suspicious operation is not a complaint of a crime. They’re very different things.“, said Claudia Reis Duarte at a hearing in parliament.
Cláudia Reis Duarte spoke at the Committee on Budget, Finance and Public Administration, where he was called by the PS as chairman of the Coordination Committee for Policies on Prevention and Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism.
The governor stressed that the communication of operations is a preventive duty, to be activated whenever an entity (such as banks, gambling dealers in casinos, auction houses, lawyers, auditors or real estate agents) suspects the criminal origin of the funds involved in an operation.
“It’s an alert, It’s a handlift“, insisted, referring to the duty that the so-called “obligated entities” covered by the law to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing have when they consider that an operation is associated with funds or assets arising from criminal activities.
According to the law, a bank or another obliged entity must report a suspicious operation the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) whenever it knows, suspects or has “reasons sufficient to suspect that certain funds or other assets, regardless of the amount or value involved, come from criminal activities or are related to the financing of terrorism”.
These communications happen when “we are in the preventive phase, not in the complaint phase.“and, therefore, “it is natural that DCIAP does not analyze each and every communication it receives”, because it is the UIF that centralizes the communications related to suspicion, the Secretary of State pointed out.
Claudia Reis Duarte stated that the assessment by the entities shall be based on a risk analysis, “the more endured the greater the risk of the sector” in which they operate.
PS deputy Miguel Costa Matos said: “We are seeing a huge increase in the prevalence” of money laundering crime, with a growth of 42% in 2025 compared to 2024, citing data from the Annual Internal Security Report (RASI) of 2025, according to which this evolution “is related to the growing use of computer platforms, creating opportunities for this type of crime, whose advantages are then integrated into international financial circuits”.
CDS-PP Member Paulo Nuncio recalled that it was the government of Pedro Passos Coelho that in 2015 created this commission, stressing the “significant progress” in the last ten years in the fight against whitening, and asked if the increase in communications means an increase in crimes committed.
In response to Members, the Secretary of State said that there are several factors that explain the increase in the number of communications due to suspected whitening crime, not being “an immediate mirror of an increase in crime”.
Admitting that there is “a real increase in suspicious operations”, notably by the increase in crime in the digital environment, with attempts to ‘phishing’ and cases of ‘Hello, Mother’, ‘Hello, Father’, Claudia Reis Duarte said that growth “also results from increased awareness of all operators with the fulfilment of their legal obligations in this matter”.