Globally, illicit financial flows rose to $4.4T in 2025, as revealed by Nasdaq Verafin’s 2026 Global Financial Crime Report — with trends in the European, Middle East, and African (EMEA) region mirroring this trajectory.
Illicit financial flows across EMEA increased to over $1.4T, at a 21.4% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR: 2023-2025), including all major predicate crimes to money laundering. Organised crime, corruption and other criminal activity increased to $908.1B, drug trafficking to $322.0B and human trafficking to $167.2B. The result is an evenly distributed — and more complex — risk landscape.
Fraud Evolves: From Infrastructure to Human Behaviour
With total global fraud losses surpassing $579B in 2025, EMEA accounted for $132.9B of that concerning statistic. The most notable shift is within scam typologies, where consumer-driven scams grew by over 40% (CAGR) since 2023, reflecting the prevalence of authorised push payment fraud and social engineering.
Real-time Payments & Cross-Border Exposure
This evolution is closely tied to the continued expansion of real-time and cross-border payment systems across EMEA. Faster payments — identified as a top vulnerability by over 50% of the 500 global financial institutions interviewed — have reduced intervention windows to sub-seconds.
AI: Accelerating Both Sides of the Equation
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the threat landscape. Around 90% of institutions interviewed report an increase in AI-enabled attacks, including more convincing impersonation scams and scalable social engineering. However, more institutions report using AI technology to combat this — 75% plan to increase AI adoption in their own detection programs. In Europe, this creates a distinct challenge: balancing rapid innovation with regulatory expectations around explainability, auditability and control.
Converging Crime, Converging Risk
Another defining shift is the growing convergence of crime types. Human trafficking has grown nearly 25% (CAGR) since 2023 in EMEA and is increasingly linked with fraud and organised crime through shared financial networks. This convergence challenges traditional operational silos. Fraud and AML are no longer discrete disciplines — they are different lenses on the same underlying activity.
Actionable Considerations for European Institutions
What does this mean in practice? Moving forward, financial institutions in Europe will need to:
- Expand visibility across cross-border transaction flows.
- Adapt detection to identify behavioural manipulation and scam signals.
- Accelerate AI adoption while ensuring regulatory-grade guardrails.
- Break down silos between fraud and AML to reflect converging risk patterns.
Europe’s financial system has become more connected and efficient. Now, the challenge is to ensure anti-financial crime controls evolve at the same pace.
For more insights from EMEA and across the globe, download our 2026 Global Financial Crime Report.
About the Author
KAMLESH HARRY
Principal Strategic Advisor of Fraud Solutions
Kamlesh Harry currently serves as Principal Strategic Advisor of Fraud Solutions at Nasdaq Verafin, leading the global financial crime prevention strategy. During his career at global Tier 1 banks across South Africa, the U.S., and the U.K., he has helped financial institutions identify and mitigate financial crime risks while advancing payment fraud risk management, cyber security, and business operations. A passionate advocate for raising awareness and education among students and vulnerable communities, Kamlesh invests personal time volunteering with the Sussex and Surrey Police in the fight against financial crime. He also promotes fraud, financial crime, and cyber risk awareness across markets, fostering skills to build a safer digital ecosystem. He is a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) accredited by ISACA.
