CTIF-CFI Annual Report 2025: A Record Year in Numbers
Belgium's Financial Intelligence Unit received more suspicious transaction reports than ever before in 2025, and its analyses led to more money frozen and more information shared internationally than in any prior year.
The CTIF-CFI Annual Report 2025 confirms a trend we have been tracking for several years now: reporting volumes keep rising, and the CFI keeps sharpening the tools it uses to turn that volume into effective action against money laundering and terrorist financing.
2025 in figures: the growth continues
The CFI received 102,312 communications of information in 2025 (suspicious transaction reports, information from foreign counterparts, and information from State services). This confirms an uninterrupted upward trend:
2023: 79,211
2024: 91,487
2025: 102,312 (+11.9% versus 2024, +29.2% versus 2023)
Payment institutions remain the main driver of this growth. The sector alone accounted for nearly 52,000 reports in 2025, an increase of close to 10,000 reports in a single year, and now represents 50.6% of all reports received. Credit institutions follow at 38.8%, with e-money institutions a distant third at 3.8%.
This increase should be read with some nuance. Many of these payment institutions passport their services from Belgium to clients across the EU, and more than 90% of these reports are, after initial review by the CFI, outsourced to foreign counterparts under the cross-border reporting procedure, since there is no direct link to Belgium. Even so, this information remains a valuable data source for the CFI's own analyses.
Referrals to the judicial authorities: fewer cases, higher amounts
Despite the sharp rise in incoming reports, the number of new cases referred to the public prosecutor's office remained broadly stable:
2023: 1,316 new cases for EUR 2,427.25 million
2024: 1,347 new cases for EUR 1,958.80 million
2025: 1,334 new cases for EUR 2,133.66 million
In other words, the CFI referred slightly fewer new cases than in 2024, but for a higher total amount,reflecting a shift back towards larger, more complex files. On top of this, the CFI transmitted complementary reports on existing cases for a further EUR 383.09 million in 2025.
Cooperation with the labour auditorates also intensified. Copies of referral reports sent to the labour auditorates jumped from 617 in 2024 to 760 in 2025, a sign of the CFI's growing focus on social fraud files, a trend also visible in the predicate offence statistics elsewhere in the report.
A sharper freezing tool: oppositions more than double again
One of the most striking figures in the 2025 report is the continued rise in the CFI's use of its opposition power (the ability to block a transaction for up to five days pending judicial follow-up):
2023: 62 oppositions for EUR 4.49 million
2024: 110 oppositions for EUR 9.63 million
2025: 259 oppositions for EUR 15.36 million
This is more than a doubling in both number and value for the second year running, confirming the CFI's active role in a “catch the money” approach, alongside its systematic practice of alerting the Central Body for Seizure and Confiscation (COIV) whenever significant assets are identified for potential judicial seizure.
International cooperation keeps expanding
Belgium's position at the crossroads of European payment flows continues to generate substantial cross-border traffic:
Incoming cooperation (requests and spontaneous communications received): 1,472 in 2025, up from 1,105 in 2024, with Europe accounting for the large majority.
Outgoing cooperation (requests and spontaneous communications sent): 2,227 in 2025, including 1,528 communications related to correspondent banking alone.
The technical exchange mechanisms show an interesting divergence:
XBR (cross-border reporting), used to hand off reports with no genuine link to Belgium, rose sharply to 47,533 in 2025, up from 35,455 in 2024 and 19,574 in 2023, mirroring the payment institution trend described above.
XBD (cross-border dissemination), used to flag metadata to partner FIUs before analysis, fell back to 113 in 2025, down from 329 in 2024.
Information sharing with administrative authorities
The CFI's exchanges with domestic administrative partners also grew in most categories:
Dienst Coördinatie Anti-Fraude (CAF): 792 communications in 2025, up from 700 in 2024.
Sociale Inlichtingen- en Opsporingsdienst (SIOD): 594 communications, up from 471.
COIV: 259 communications, consistent with the rise in oppositions described above.
Douane en Accijnzen:32 communications, up from 13.
These figures illustrate how the CFI's information system increasingly functions as a hub feeding multiple administrative and judicial actors simultaneously, rather than a single channel toward the public prosecutor alone.
Key takeaways for reporting entities
Reporting volumes keep growing, driven largely by the payment institutions sector and its EU passporting activity.
Judicial referrals remain stable in number but heavier in value, suggesting the CFI is prioritising complex, high-impact files.
The opposition mechanism is becoming a core enforcement tool, more than doubling for the second consecutive year.
International information sharing is intensifying, both in volume and in the sophistication of the channels used (XBR/XBD).
These trends reinforce a message the CFI has repeated across recent annual reports: the quality and completeness of suspicious transaction reports matters as much as their volume, since it directly shapes how quickly and accurately the CFI can screen, prioritise, and act on the information it receives.
