Lietuvos bankas (Prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing - Concept of 'systematic infringement' - Judgment) [2025] EUECJ C-671/23 (19 June 2025)

Executive summary

The Court of Justice interpreted Article 59 of Directive 2015/849 in a reference from the Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court concerning fines imposed by Lietuvos bankas on an electronic money institution, M, for eight infringements of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist-financing rules. It held that the Directive does not preclude national legislation or practice allowing a separate fine for each infringement established in the course of one investigation, so long as the sanctions remain effective, proportionate and dissuasive and the principle ne bis in idem is respected.

Key points

• Parties: M, an electronic money institution, versus Lietuvos bankas (Bank of Lithuania).
• Issue: whether Article 59 of Directive 2015/849 allows separate fines for each infringement found in a single AML/CTF investigation.
• Holding: EU law does not bar multiple fines where each fine corresponds to a distinct infringement established in that investigation.
• Reasoning: Directive 2015/849 requires effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions for serious, repeated, systematic or related breaches, while also requiring observance of ne bis in idem.
• The Court’s analysis was grounded in AML/CTF enforcement architecture, not sanctions or export controls specifically, but it is relevant to regulatory penalty design and cumulative administrative exposure.
• Lithuanian law defined “systematic infringement” and allowed penalties for multiple breaches of customer due diligence, reporting, record-keeping and internal controls.

Why it matters

The judgment supports stronger administrative enforcement against institutions that repeatedly or in combination fail AML/CTF controls, a core financial-crime and national-security risk area. For sanctions-intelligence work, it shows the Court endorsing cumulative penalties as a compliance lever where regimes target financial-system abuse linked to terrorist financing.

Implications

Compliance teams should expect that multiple defects discovered in one inspection can trigger multiple fines if national law treats them as separate infringements, increasing aggregate penalty exposure. In litigation, the key strategy point is not to challenge multiplicity in the abstract, but to test whether the alleged breaches are truly distinct and whether the sanctioning authority has preserved proportionality and ne bis in idem.