Legal framework turns the financial system into an agent against organized crime

Law No. 15,358/2026, also called the “Anti-Faction Law,” establishes Brazil’s legal framework for combating organized crime with a clear objective: creating guidelines to confront ultra-violent criminal organizations, paramilitary groups and private militias. But what makes this law particularly relevant to the financial system is not merely the definition of offenses, but the mechanisms that directly target the economic infrastructure sustaining these organizations’ flow of funds.

By acting on financial flows and economic operations, the legislation connects traditional criminal enforcement to the financial sphere. It thus turns banks, payment services and digital platforms into active instruments for containing unlawful activity.

Chapter II of the law, addressing precautionary asset-preservation measures, establishes not merely a set of legal tools but a practical capacity to intervene in economic flows. When sufficient indications exist, measures directly affecting institutions’ operations and the fluidity of payments can be ordered even during an investigation.

From Pix to irregular betting transactions

These include freezing assets and funds, including digital assets; suspending or limiting economic activities; and, particularly importantly, blocking access to financial systems, payment services and digital platforms, including credit, debit and electronic transfer instruments such as Pix.

The law’s structure itself reinforces the financial system’s central role in this process. Mandatory communication with bodies such as the Financial Activities Control Council (Coaf), the Central Bank (BC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM), the Superintendency of Private Insurance (Susep) and the Federal Revenue Service creates an environment of coordinated action. Multiple layers of monitoring and blocking can be activated simultaneously.

This movement connects directly with other developments in the regulatory framework, such as obligations concerning unauthorized operators in the betting market. In these cases, financial and payment institutions have a duty to block accounts and prevent new transactions enabling unauthorized activities, as well as to join information-sharing systems that identify patterns of fraud and risk.

An active role

On one hand, legislation creates mechanisms to interrupt flows associated with criminal structures. On the other, regulation assigns the financial system responsibility for preventing certain flows from happening at all. Institutions more explicitly assume an active role in filtering what may or may not be processed. The law makes financial infrastructure one of the principal means of containing unlawful activity.

But this change is not merely operational. As regulation establishes circumstances in which certain transactions must be interrupted, whether by court order or regulatory classification, new expectations emerge regarding institutions’ conduct. When rules, mandatory communications and court decisions require freezes or restrictions, action ceases to be discretionary. Technological progress, real-time monitoring, pattern analysis and data integration expand institutions’ reach over what circulates through their systems.

And where there is both duty and capacity, inaction ceases to be neutral. Failing to interrupt a flow when sufficient grounds for containing it already exist becomes a matter of governance, control and responsibility, rather than merely an operational failure. On the other hand, expanded blocking capabilities bring challenges, including increased risks of false positives, improper interruptions and impacts on legitimate customers and operations.

Every decision to block or prevent a transaction carries operational, legal, reputational and commercial effects. The movement imposes a new responsibility on institutions: beyond processing transactions efficiently, deciding in real time which flows should not exist.

Executive director of the Brazilian Association of Banking as a Service (ABBaaS).

📌 Originally published in Finsiders Brasil