Sanctions Evasion Reference

Financial intelligence unit

The national agency that receives suspicious activity reports, analyses them, and disseminates intelligence to law enforcement and to counterpart units abroad.

also known as

FIU

reviewed

2026-08-20

Every country with an anti-money-laundering regime has an FIU, and they exchange information through the Egmont Group. The FIU is the point at which a single institution’s partial view of a customer can be combined with other institutions’ partial views.

That aggregation is why layering across multiple banks is less effective than it appears: the layers are invisible to each bank and visible to the unit that holds all their reports.

Where this term is used

Related terms

  • Suspicious activity report — A confidential report filed by a regulated firm with its national financial intelligence unit when it knows or suspects that activity may involve criminal proceeds or sanctioned parties.
  • Typology — A published study describing how a category of illicit activity is actually carried out, built from case material contributed by member jurisdictions.

Sources

  1. Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units. Egmont Group, 2026.
  2. The FATF Recommendations. Financial Action Task Force, 2025.

All glossary terms