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The EU’s new Anti-Money Laundering Authority warned national regulators and virtual asset service platforms, also known as VASPs, on Tuesday to ensure they have sufficient controls in place to mitigate the sector’s unique vulnerability to illicit finance.

AMLA, which became fully operational July 1 after setting up shop in Frankfurt, Germany, will monitor compliance with new, EU-wide AML rules, serve as a platform for sharing financial intelligence across the bloc’s internal borders and directly supervise 40 systemically important financial institutions from 2028 onwards.

“It is essential that in the light of a new regulatory framework and major transformation of the crypto-assets sector, Europe is adequately protected from the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing stemming from this sector,” AMLA chair Bruna Szego said Tuesday.

Szego’s statement, which marks AMLA’s arrival as a supervisor of supervisors, comes as the latter takes a larger role in overseeing cryptocurrency exchanges and other VASPs pursuant to the bloc’s markets in crypto-asset regulation, or MiCA, which came into force in December.

AMLA also published a preliminary annual strategy for 2025 on Tuesday that ranks tackling the financial crime-related risks of virtual assets as an “immediate priority” for the rest of the year, and warns that inconsistencies in VASP-related supervision from nation to nation could raise the EU’s overall exposure to illicit finance.

To address the threat, AMLA pledged to work closely with national regulators.

“While this first work program does not represent a fully developed strategic blueprint … [it outlines] the early operational priorities and the first steps toward effective supervision and FIU coordination,” officials noted.

The agency’s other function—serving as a platform for national financial intelligence units to share details on suspicious transactions and the parties involved in them—will meanwhile prioritize investigations into cryptocurrency-enabled schemes, with a particular focus on identifying “cross-border typologies and emerging risks in this fast-evolving domain.”

AMLA will welcome the first delegates from the EU’s 27 national FIUs in September; oversee their review of each other’s regulatory powers, operational capabilities and organizational structure; and establish the technical and procedural foundations for them to begin sharing intelligence.

Other priorities this year include hiring more personnel and laying the groundwork for direct and indirect supervision of the EU’s entire financial system.