Money laundering offence extended to all predicate offences

A law voted through on 20 November 2025 and published in the Mémorial A n°556/2025 (Law[1]) has redefined the offence of money laundering by both simplifying it and extending its scope of application, which was already broad.

To give a brief reminder, money laundering was made an offence in 1989 and at the time, was only aimed at tackling drug trafficking. Its scope was gradually extended to include terrorism and organised crime. Over the years, the list of predicate offences has grown. The Law is the final step in this chain of developments , as it states that every crime constitutes a predicate offence.

The offence of money laundering has become inextricably linked not only with the criminal law, but also with the world of finance and banking. An entire legal and compliance system has been built around this concept. The recent reform will therefore have an impact that goes beyond purely the criminal law as it also affects professional obligations with regard to combatting money laundering.

The objective of criminalising money laundering is to prevent profits from criminal activities from being integrated into the legal economy by breaking the link between the predicate offence and its economic added value. Criminalisation also aims to deprive organised crime of its resources in order to drain its finances, reduce its attractiveness and protect the integrity of the economic and financial system.

Through their professional obligations, participants in the financial sector and other sectors contribute to detecting these offences, which allows the authorities to block and seize funds and carry out investigations.

What are the changes and their impacts?

The Law does not modify the actual definition of money laundering, nor does it change the sanctions. Therefore, the associated sanction for individuals is still imprisonment of one to five years and a fine of EUR 1,250 to EUR 1,250,000. There are still three types of money laundering acts that are criminalised, namely:

1) “misleading justification” means facilitating the misleading justification of the nature, origin or ownership of an asset.
2) “disguise” means aiding in a dissimulation, disguise, transfer or conversion transaction.
3) “holding” means simply acquiring, holding or using these assets.

This Law is innovative at the level of the predicate offences: these prohibited actions now cover “the purpose or product, direct or indirect, of …or constituting a material benefit deriving from” a crime.

It should be noted that it does not matter whether this predicate offence was committed in Luxembourg or abroad or whether it can still be prosecuted (e.g. due to statute of limitations or the death of the perpetrator). However, the offence must also be punishable in the country in which it was committed (except for some serious offences). By contrast, a conviction for money laundering does not require proof that the accused had precise and detailed knowledge of the offence.

This change was somewhat unexpected. The objective of the initial bill of law was simply to update the list of predicate offences, which included references that are now obsolete, in order to make these provisions more “operational” and to respond to FATF requirements. There have been few observations on this change during the legislative process, which has remained purely formal, until the Conseil d’État (State Council) proposed to align with France and Belgium (also with some earlier comments) and replace the list of predicate offences with a general and generic reference. Although this is a paradigm shift, the Parliamentary Committee has simply decided to “give a favourable response to the Conseil d’État proposal” and to submit the new text for parliamentary vote without requesting a new opinion from the parties concerned, in particular, the various judicial authorities.

It is not likely that the number of convictions will increase substantially, as the list of predicate offences was already very extensive. However, in the criminal law, the impact of this new definition goes much further. Due to cross-references between articles, there may be an impact on territorial jurisdiction, on the mandatory nature of confiscation, on the statute of limitations (ongoing offences) and on the coercive measures that an investigating judge can order. Money laundering therefore risks becoming a procedural instrument, even more so than it was in the past.

In addition, the Law does not abolish the specific provisions on drugs in the legislation, although these are now superfluous and duplicative.

With this change, the difference between the offence of money laundering and that of handling of illegally obtained goods (recel) (Art. 505 of the Criminal Code) becomes more blurred. The question that then comes to mind is whether retaining two different offences is justified or whether merging them would be better, as some of Luxembourg’s neighbours have done. However, unlike the handling of illegally obtained goods (recel), money laundering can also be prosecuted against the perpetrator of the predicate offence, which represents the majority of cases brought to court. Typically, those who commit theft are automatically guilty of the “holding” type of money laundering, as they have the stolen object in their possession and know its origin. While the facts in money laundering and handling of illegally obtained goods (recel) are largely the same, public perception of the two differs: a person laundering money is often associated with financial flows, whereas a the offence of “recel” is associated with street crime.

Broader implications of the changes

With regard to criminal proceedings, money laundering will now also encompass some offences that were not covered previously, such as laundering the product of breaching professional secrecy. Taking this line of thinking further even leads to absurd outcomes when including offences against people and morality. Added to this is the fact that the Court of Appeal has recently decided that even a saving made thanks to an offence can be considered to be laundered as a “product” of this offence. For example, a person who breaks into a house to spend the night there could thus be considered as money launderer with regard to the accommodation costs that they saved.

For professionals who are subject to AML obligations, it must be noted that the law of 12 November 2004 defines money laundering and the “associated underlying offence” by express reference to the Criminal Code. As a result, anti-money laundering obligations to detect offences and the obligation to declare suspicions to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)[2] are now extended to all types of offence.

They are not restricted to financial and economic offences only, but concern all types of offences. It is already not easy for professionals to put in place appropriate mechanisms to satisfy these obligations. On one hand, they must implement and configure IT tools and algorithms to detect patterns that reveal these offences and on the other, they must train staff to be able to recognise the signs of these offences. From now on, any offence can constitute a predicate offence — and there are thousands of them under Luxembourg criminal law.

1. Law of 12 December 2025 amending 1) the Criminal Code and 2) the Criminal Procedure Code – Mémorial A n°556/2025.

2. The French term is cellule de renseignement financier (CRF)