84 Partnerships, 51 Jurisdictions: The FATF's New Report Puts Information Sharing at the Center of the Fight

On July 8, 2026, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published a new report, and this time the subject isn't a crime, laundering typology or a virtual-asset risk review. Information Sharing to Combat Illicit Finance, released in July 2026, is about the machinery that sits underneath every one of those fights: how information moves between the people who hold it and the people who can act on it, and why public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become the main way jurisdictions are trying to make that movement faster.

In a live crypto investigation, those delays have consequences. Funds move rapidly, while records and legal authority often sit with different organizations. When verified information reaches the right team quickly, accounts can be identified, records are preserved, and assets can be restricted while funds remain recoverable.

The report is based on a September 2025 survey of 78 delegations, open-source research, and earlier work. Its map identifies at least 84 PPPs across 51 jurisdictions.

We read it closely because it describes a problem we encounter in live investigations. BlockchainUnmasked is a member of the Crypto Defenders Alliance (CDA) and the Circle Alliance Program. In December 2025, we joined the Illicit Virtual Asset Notification (IVAN) partnership, a U.S. government-led PPP that supports state and federal investigations involving virtual assets. We repeatedly encounter the operational problem FATF describes: getting verified information to the right authority while funds remain reachable.

The full report runs to more than 60 pages and covers governance, data protection, and cross-border arrangements in detail. Four figures carry most of its argument, so we have organized our analysis around them. The charts were rebuilt in our own design using data reported by FATF in 2026.

What the map shows

Global map of PPPs or PPP adoption: at least 84 partnerships across 51 jurisdictions. Based on data reported in FATF, Information Sharing to Combat Illicit Finance (July 2026).

Figure 1 maps at least 84 PPPs across 51 jurisdictions. Europe accounts for 23 of the mapped jurisdictions, followed by Asia-Pacific with nine, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with seven, and the Americas and Africa with six each.

The map should not be treated as a measure of operational coverage because jurisdictions may also share information through financial intelligence units, law enforcement channels, Europol, the Egmont Secure Web, or bilateral arrangements. What the map cannot show is response speed, the information each channel may lawfully exchange, or whether all parties needed to act are connected.

In one of our published case studies, victim timelines, exchange records, blockchain analysis, and lawful process each supplied a different part of the case. The 84 PPPs identified by FATF range from emerging discussion forums to partnerships with daily communication, joint analytical teams and near-real-time exchange. The raw number measures adoption, not response capacity.

Who runs the partnerships

Leadership of the 58 PPPs examined in the survey. Based on data reported in FATF, Information Sharing to Combat Illicit Finance (July 2026).

Figure 2 classifies the 58 PPPs surveyed by FATF as follows:

• 36, or 62.1%, are led by financial intelligence units (FIUs).

• 15, or 25.9%, are led by another authority or a multi-agency structure.

• 7, or 12.1%, are law-enforcement-led.

Most partnerships in FATF’s leadership sample are led by financial intelligence units. But governance type is not the decisive variable. The operational question is whether investigators, financial institutions, technical analysts, and authorities with lawful process are connected when a case arrives.

What still slows sharing down

Main obstacles to PPP information sharing, by share of surveyed jurisdictions citing each barrier. Based on data reported in FATF, Information Sharing to Combat Illicit Finance (July 2026).

FATF’s barrier data show that 52% of surveyed jurisdictions cite data-protection and privacy rules, 45% banking secrecy, 41% legal ambiguity or absent gateways, and 33% cross-border legal mismatches. Technical or IT constraints (28%), trust and cultural barriers (22%), and institutional capacity gaps (18%) follow. The top four are legal or regulatory.

In many jurisdictions, the main bottleneck is not the technical ability to share securely but the lack of clarity and certainty about what may lawfully be shared, with whom, and under what conditions.

Roughly three-quarters of jurisdictions report having safeguards such as encryption, access controls, and audit trails. Privacy law imposes real limits, but the figures suggest that uncertainty about those limits creates an additional cost: institutions facing ambiguity rationally adopt the most conservative interpretation.

Many remedies FATF highlights reduce uncertainty, including explicit gateways, safe-harbor protections, and privacy-preserving technical mechanisms. Examples include COSMIC’s statutory safe harbor and FinCEN’s Section 314(b) program. In our casework, a week spent in legal review often means the account is empty by the time action becomes possible.

FATF also identifies an important counterweight: alerts that trigger blanket account exits can displace risk rather than disrupt it, so speed needs proportionate-response guidance.

From forums to frozen funds

Evolution possibilities for PPPs, from advisory forums to cross-border integration. Based on data reported in FATF, Information Sharing to Combat Illicit Finance (July 2026).

FATF doesn’t prescribe a single model. It describes a spectrum in which partnerships may begin with trust-building and strategic exchanges, then develop operational teams, private-to-private gateways, broader membership and cross-border links.

The stages are not mutually exclusive, but operational depth increases toward the cross-border end of the spectrum. Singapore’s Anti-Scam Centre recovered more than S$140 million, while reported scam losses in 2025 exceeded S$900 million. FATF does not present those figures as a formal recovery rate.

Two FRONTIER+ joint operations led to 2,100 arrests, more than 36,000 frozen accounts, and approximately S$28.2 million seized. In our reading, the number of frozen accounts illustrates the scale at which proceeds can be distributed across mule networks and why manual, case-by-case requests struggle to keep pace.

The United Kingdom’s experience makes the design issue especially clear.

The UK’s first voluntary gateway was used only six times in 2020 and 2021. Under a later mechanism created by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, 65% of investigations triggered by shared intelligence in a six-institution sample resulted in positive risk-management action.

One case began when Bank A warned Bank B about suspected money-laundering activity involving high-value cash deposits followed by rapid transfers. Bank B combined the warning with internal data and identified a wider network assessed as providing underground-banking services. More than £10 million had moved through the network; the resulting action secured approximately £674,000 through Account Freezing Orders and generated more than 80 additional suspicious activity reports (SARs).

The case supports a practical conclusion. Legal permission is necessary, but it does not make a sharing mechanism usable on its own. Participants also need named contacts, clear legal gateways, evidence standards, secure channels, escalation routes, a process for turning warnings into action, and performance metrics.

That is the operating standard we are working toward through IVAN and our other partner channels: providing verified information in a form the receiving team can assess quickly and routing it to someone with the authority and context to act.

Deconflict, founded by former U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Mudassar Malik, operates a verified intelligence network through which law enforcement agencies can identify overlapping cryptocurrency investigations and financial institutions can corroborate alerts against active law enforcement signals. The network exchanges only the information required to detect an overlap rather than case files or personal data. It addresses a recurring problem in multi-agency and cross-border crypto cases: separate teams may be investigating the same wallets without knowing it.

Practical limits

PPPs do not replace legal process, subpoenas, court orders, or evidentiary standards. They carry real data-protection and confidentiality duties. FATF also acknowledges that measuring PPP performance remains a weak spot in many jurisdictions. That matters because trust between partners is sustained by demonstrated results, not memoranda.

Several cases we published this year depended on information obtained from outside the investigating organization, including subpoena productions, public abuse reports, court filings, and partner datasets. PPPs establish those communication channels before a live case requires them.

The practical test is whether a relevant partnership can move verified information to someone empowered to act before the funds are gone. Investigative firms such as ours can improve that handoff by supplying information that is verified, properly scoped, and ready for lawful use.