As of 31 December 2021, 381 valid licenses for the provision of virtual asset services had been issued in Estonia.
“Many entrepreneurs are innovative, apply adequate risk control measures and offer long and short-term benefits to Estonia. Such companies, who are substantially related to Estonia by employees and clients, are welcome here,” said Matis Mäeker, the Head of Estonian FIU. “However, large part of VASP sector is related to Estonia only formally, which in turn makes the supervision extremely complicated. Moreover, large part of VASPs run their businesses without clear business plan, and essential anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism knowledge, employees and IT solutions for managing the well-known risks in the sector,” Mäeker added.
“This situation contributes to the potential realization of risks of money laundering and financing terrorism. Therefore, the Estonian FIU strongly supports tightening the national regulations concerning VASPs,” Matis Mäeker explained.
According to the survey by the Estonian FIU there are 253 active VASPs under Estonian license and have 4.8 million clients, which is about 4.5 times more than in 2019. Their combined turnover was 20.3 billion euro (from July 2020 to June 2021), of which more than 85% belonged to 15 service providers. Unpredictably, most of these 15 major service providers have not submitted any reports of suspicious transactions to the Estonian FIU in 2021.
In 2021, the Estonian FIU withdrew an authorization from 329 licenses. 85 new licenses were issued in the first half of the year, and one license in the second half of the year. By the end of 2021, the Estonian FIU processed 180 applications for new licenses or changes of the existing licenses. The operation of the Estonian FIU is continuous in licensing, supervision as well as identifying money laundering and financing terrorism.
As of 1 January 2021, the Financial Intelligence Unit is an independent government agency under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance with the mission to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing in Estonia.
