The FIU was one of several agencies which an inspection by the office of the justice chancellor, Ülle Madise, revealed had accessed the enforcement register, which contains confidential banking information, around 10,000 times last year. These inquiries were made without the required legal basis.

The FIU, known in Estonian by the abbreviation RAB, voluntarily stopped using the enforcement register on July 2, one day after the Madise report was released and after the justice chancellor suggested to Justice Minister Liisa Pakosta (Eesti 200) that the restriction on who can access the enforcement register go ahead.

At the same time, the Credit Institutions Act grants the FIU access to data for analysis by order — even without using the enforcement register — and this includes bank account information when necessary for countering money laundering or terrorism financing.

The FIU will continue using that legal, albeit more time-consuming, route in such cases, the authority said.

"The FIU is continuing its work using the earlier, more time-consuming method — requesting data through official orders via email. This means obtaining data now takes much longer — up to two weeks instead of one business day — while the response files must be processed manually," the bureau said.

In the case of money laundering and terrorism financing, transactions between accounts can occur within minutes, the FIU noted, meaning the enforcement register had provided a faster and more secure solution for information exchange.

For example, about €4 million in criminal proceeds were confiscated in Estonia last year — only about one percent of total illicit gains — primarily because crimes do not get detected quickly enough and criminal assets have already moved on by the time they are identified, the FIU went on.

In the past year, the FIU says it reached out to investigative authorities 133 times (resulting in 172 reports), with 10 criminal proceedings initiated based on information analyzed and forwarded by the FIU (out of the total 11,055 noted above, i.e., 0.09 percent of the total).

Most of the over 11,000 reports derived from sectors where reporting quality is very low, meaning deeper analysis is seldom engaged in. Either that or reports involve fraud (in about 25 percent of cases last year), which has to be assessed collectively, not case by case.

The FIU also made 1,695 operational information transfers to investigative agencies, related to 2,233 reports.

356 transfers were made to foreign financial intelligence units.
In total, the FIU says it shared information from around 2,800 reports with its partners last year.

The overall volume of suspicious transactions and activities from suspicion-based reports amounted to €1.87 billion in 2024, the authority noted.

This number has already been reached as of July this year, however.

In 2025 so far, FIU has received 7,590 reports, 5,699 of which indicated suspicions of money laundering or terrorism financing, to a total transaction volume of €1.83 billion.

Meanwhile, the FIU has made 672 transmissions to Estonian authorities and 143 to foreign financial intelligence units up to this month.

On Tuesday evening, Pakosta signed the statute of the enforcement register and simultaneously suspended its use for queries by all institutions until each has convincingly confirmed compliance with the new strict rules. This means the FIU currently does not have access to the register and awaits the ministry's legal clarification.

Exemptions have been made for a handful of law enforcement agencies such as the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) and the Internal Security Service (ISS).

A 2022 Interior Ministry study estimated the volume of criminal income generated in Estonia in 2020 to be €458 million, solely including crimes committed in Estonia. When money laundered through Estonia from an original crime which took place abroad is factored in, that number will be higher.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook, Bluesky and X and never miss an update!