Lisbon, July 8, 2026 (Lusa) - The reporting of suspicious transactions, which banks and other institutions are required to carry out in light of the risk of money laundering, is merely a “raising of a hand”, not a report of a crime, the Secretary of State for Tax Affairs said on Wednesday.
“It is important to understand that reporting a suspicious transaction is not a report of a crime. They are very different things,” said Cláudia Reis Duarte during a parliamentary hearing.
Cláudia Reis Duarte was speaking before the Committee on Budget, Finance and Public Administration, which had summoned her as chair of the Coordination Committee for Policies to Prevent and Combat Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism.
She emphasised that reporting transactions is a preventative duty, to be triggered whenever an entity (such as banks, casino operators, auction houses, solicitors, auditors or estate agents) suspects that the funds involved in a transaction are of criminal origin.
“It is a warning, it is a raising of the hand,” she insisted, referring to the duty that so-called “obliged entities” covered by the law on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing have when they consider that a transaction is linked to funds or assets derived from criminal activities.
Under the law, a bank or other obliged entity must report a suspicious transaction to the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF) whenever it knows, suspects or has “sufficient grounds to suspect that certain funds or other assets, regardless of the amount or value involved, derive from criminal activities or are related to the financing of terrorism”.
These reports are made “during the preventive phase, not the complaint phase” and, therefore, “it is natural that the DCIAP does not analyse each and every report it receives”, because it is the UIF that centralises reports relating to suspicions, she emphasised.
Duarte stated that the assessment to be carried out by the relevant authorities must be based on a risk analysis, “the more thorough the analysis, the greater the risk in the economic sector” in which they operate.
Socialist Paarty MP Miguel Costa Matos noted: “We are witnessing a huge increase in the prevalence” of money laundering, with a 42% increase in 2025 compared to 2024, citing data from the 2025 Annual Internal Security Report (RASI), according to which this trend “is linked to the growing use of IT platforms, creating opportunities for this type of crime, the proceeds of which are then channelled into international financial circuits”.
CDS-PP MP Paulo Núncio recalled that it was Pedro Passos Coelho’s government that established this committee in 2015, highlighting the “significant progress” made over the last ten years in combating money laundering, and asked whether the rise in reports signalled an increase in the number of crimes committed.
In response to the MPs, the Secretary of State said that there are several factors explaining the rise in the number of reports of suspected money laundering offences, and that this is not “an immediate reflection of a rise in crime”.
Whilst acknowledging that there is “a real increase in suspicious transactions”, particularly due to the rise in digital crime, including phishing attempts and cases such as the “Hello, Mum, Hello, Dad” scams, Cláudia Reis Duarte said that the increase “also stems from greater awareness amongst all operators regarding compliance with their legal obligations in this area”.
PCT/ADB // ADB.
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