Monaco was one of just eight countries to sign a new Council of Europe treaty in Strasbourg on Wednesday that will make it easier to trace, freeze and confiscate the proceeds of crime, including crypto-assets, as the Principality works to strengthen its credentials in the fight against financial crime.
Monaco signed alongside Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Montenegro, San Marino and the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union, making it one of the first of the Council of Europe’s 46 member states to back the agreement. The treaty was opened for signature on 14th October during the Council of Europe’s annual Octopus conference on cybercrime.
Closing in on criminal money
The treaty is an Additional Protocol to the 2005 Warsaw Convention, the Council of Europe’s main instrument against money laundering and terrorist financing. It is designed to modernise asset recovery in the face of criminal networks that are increasingly sophisticated, transnational and technologically advanced.
Under the new rules, courts will be able to confiscate property linked to wider criminal conduct, in some cases without a criminal conviction, and target assets held by third parties, while protecting those who acquired them in good faith. Authorities will also be able to freeze or seize assets urgently, without prior notice, before they can be moved or hidden.
Signatory states will be required to set up dedicated offices to trace and manage criminal assets, respond to requests from their counterparts within set deadlines, including within three days in urgent cases, and give financial intelligence units better access to financial and virtual-asset data.
“Criminal money sustains organised crime. It also buys what should never be for sale: our democracies. Taking that money away is democratic security,” said Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset. “No state can recover criminal assets across borders on its own. With this protocol, none will have to.”
Where the money goes
Confiscated assets will be returned first to victims or their rightful owners. Sums above €10,000 will, as a rule, be shared equally between the countries involved in recovering them, and states are encouraged to put confiscated assets to social or public use.
The protocol will enter into force once it has been ratified by five states, at least three of them Council of Europe members.
A theme of Monaco’s presidency
For Monaco, the signature carries particular weight. The Principality has held the rotating presidency of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers since May, a term that runs until November, and has placed the fight against financial crime at the centre of it.
In June, Monaco’s presidency led a declaration adopted by justice ministers from all 46 member states committing them to strengthen the identification, freezing and recovery of criminal proceeds, including crypto-assets. At the time, Monaco’s Secretary of State for Justice, Samuel Vuelta Simon, described the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing as “a long-term political commitment”.
The signature also comes as Monaco works to leave the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global anti-money laundering watchdog, which placed the Principality under increased monitoring in June 2024. In June this year, the FATF concluded that Monaco had substantially completed the action plan agreed at that time, clearing the way for an on-site visit by assessors, one of the final steps before removal.
The Additional Protocol was adopted by the foreign ministers of the Council of Europe’s 46 member states at their annual session in ChiÈ™inău on 15th May 2026.
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