Uruguay Launches 2025–2030 Strategy to Tackle Money Laundering With Coordinated, Results-Driven Approach

Uruguay is entering a decisive new phase in its fight against financial crime with the unveiling of a comprehensive 2025–2030 national strategy aimed at combating money laundering and related illicit finance. Far from being a symbolic declaration of intent, this initiative serves as a structured roadmap informed by recent national risk findings and hard lessons from previous enforcement shortcomings.

The 2024 National Risk Assessment highlighted critical vulnerabilities that have been exploited by organized criminal networks. Among the highest-risk conduits for illicit funds are drug trafficking, entrenched corruption, and the often-overlooked trade of professional athletes’ transfer rights. These channels have proven particularly challenging to regulate due to their complex transaction structures, offshore components, and insufficient monitoring mechanisms.

The strategy confronts these realities head-on, seeking to overhaul preventive frameworks, inject agility into investigations, and reverse the decline in money laundering convictions. Rather than relying on isolated actions, Uruguay is adopting a multi-pillar approach where prevention, enforcement, and asset recovery operate as mutually reinforcing priorities. Central to this vision is a dual focus: developing the capacity to detect and disrupt illicit financial flows before they vanish undetected, and prosecuting cases swiftly enough to create meaningful deterrence. For years, seizures and suspicious transaction reports have failed to translate into proportional legal outcomes. This plan’s ambition is to break that pattern by aligning intelligence gathering, legal structures, and prosecutorial action.

Recognizing that enforcement is only as effective as the coordination behind it, the strategy rejects the notion of siloed agencies operating independently. Instead, it integrates all relevant institutions into a shared operational environment, anchored by the Integrated System for Combating Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking, known as SILCON. This presidentially led platform unites ministries and security forces to ensure that intelligence—whether from a drug shipment seizure or another enforcement action—immediately informs financial investigations. By placing organized crime and money laundering on the same strategic map, SILCON eliminates the artificial divide that has often hampered enforcement efforts.

The national plan reinforces this with a central coordination unit endowed with both authority and operational tools, including secure communication systems, shared intelligence databases, and the ability to deploy multi-agency task forces at short notice. For example, suspicious transaction data received by the financial intelligence unit can now be linked to customs alerts or law enforcement intercepts without procedural delays. The framework also addresses past weaknesses in private-sector engagement. Financial institutions, notaries, and other designated non-financial businesses will now participate in regular briefings and risk updates, creating a feedback loop that allows prevention measures to adapt rapidly to evolving criminal methodologies.

Legal reform stands at the core of Uruguay’s modernization push. While Law 19 574 already imposes strict obligations on reporting entities, the 2025–2030 strategy introduces targeted amendments to close loopholes and sharpen enforcement tools. Among the most significant changes is the lowering of cash transaction reporting thresholds, compelling entities to monitor and flag smaller sums that might otherwise evade scrutiny. Criminal networks often exploit thresholds by breaking large amounts into multiple smaller deposits—a tactic known as structuring or smurfing. Lowering these limits aims to render such methods less effective.

The updated framework will also expand the list of predicate offences beyond traditional crimes like narcotics trafficking to explicitly include cybercrime, environmental offences, and large-scale fraud schemes—reflecting both global trends and domestic vulnerabilities. On the prosecution front, specialized AML prosecutors will gain greater investigative authority, supported by teams that include forensic accountants and digital analysts to trace intricate transaction paths that may span multiple jurisdictions before re-entering Uruguay’s financial system.

New administrative penalties will target supervisory breaches by reporting entities, ensuring that failures in due diligence or suspicious activity reporting carry consequences even absent a criminal conviction. This is paired with a commitment to measurable outcomes. Unlike past strategies that focused on the volume of suspicious transaction reports, the new metrics emphasize the proportion of reports leading to investigations, prosecutions, convictions, and asset recovery. This change is intended to correct the imbalance in recent years, where thousands of reports resulted in relatively few judicial outcomes. Advanced analytics and prioritization tools will help direct resources toward cases with the greatest potential for disruption and recovery.

Large-scale seizures, such as multi-ton cocaine interceptions, will no longer be treated purely as law enforcement victories. Each will now automatically trigger a financial investigation designed to uncover laundering channels, freeze assets, and dismantle the economic networks sustaining organized crime. Technological investment will play a crucial role, with automated transaction monitoring, link analysis software, and integrated databases connecting customs, police, and financial intelligence records to detect anomalies earlier and block illicit funds from moving undetected.

On the prevention side, outreach will target high-risk sectors including professional sports transfers, real estate, and cash-intensive businesses, with supervisors increasing thematic inspections and feeding results into risk assessments and enforcement strategies.

Authorities will measure success through tangible results, such as increased money laundering convictions, higher asset recovery volumes, and the demonstrated ability to disrupt cross-border criminal financing. Over time, Uruguay’s strengthened reputation for financial transparency could bolster its appeal to legitimate international investors, reinforcing a virtuous cycle of compliance and economic growth.

The path ahead will not be without challenges. Maintaining momentum over five years will demand sustained political will, stable funding, and adaptability to evolving threats. Criminal networks remain highly agile, and gains could be quickly eroded without vigilance. Nonetheless, the combined force of SILCON’s operational integration, targeted legislative reforms, expanded supervisory scope, and performance-driven objectives represents a decisive shift in Uruguay’s posture. If fully executed, the 2025–2030 strategy could transform the country’s anti-money laundering framework from reactive to proactive—setting a new benchmark for the region.

By fLEXI tEAM