TRACFIN — filing a déclaration de soupçon in France

In France, money-laundering and terrorism-financing intelligence flows to a single national agency: TRACFIN. Every PSP authorised in France or operating into France on a Freedom-of-Services basis files déclarations de soupçon with TRACFIN through its dedicated portal — separately from any prudential reporting to ACPR. The procedural rules are tighter than the EU floor, the threshold for a soupçon is narrower than the Dutch unusual-transaction test, and the personal liability of the named déclarant is real. This is the operational walkthrough.

1. What TRACFIN is

TRACFIN — Traitement du renseignement et action contre les circuits financiers clandestins — is France’s financial-intelligence unit. It is administratively attached to the Ministry of Economy and Finance but operationally independent. TRACFIN’s mandate sits in the Code monétaire et financier (CMF), Articles L.561-1 and following, which transposes the EU AML directives into French law.

TRACFIN is the receiving authority for suspicious-activity reports filed by obligated subjects (professionnels assujettis). It analyses, enriches with intelligence from partner agencies, and disseminates to the prosecutor, the police or fiscal authorities. It is the equivalent of SEPBLAC in Spain — though with one structural difference: TRACFIN is purely an intelligence unit and does not supervise. Supervision sits with ACPR (and AMF for investment-services firms).

2. Who must file

Article L.561-2 lists obligated subjects. The list is wide; for a fintech audience the relevant categories are:

• Credit institutions and branches of foreign credit institutions
• Electronic-money institutions and payment institutions, including those passporting in
• Investment service providers under MiFID II
• Crypto-asset service providers (PSAN under the previous regime, CASPs under MiCA)
• Crowdfunding service providers
• Notaries, lawyers, accountants and other regulated professionals when handling regulated transactions

For a passporting EMI / PI, activity in France triggers the obligation as a function of the activity carried on in France — see our AML representative across the EU piece for how the named-person obligation interacts.

3. The two named roles — déclarant and correspondant

French AML law requires every obligated subject to designate two named individuals to TRACFIN:

• Déclarant TRACFIN — the signatory of every déclaration de soupçon. Must have authority to commit the firm to the filing. France-resident expected.
• Correspondant TRACFIN — the day-to-day liaison who receives intelligence requests and operational communications. Often distinct from the déclarant, though small firms combine the roles.

Both are notified to TRACFIN through the ERMES portal at appointment. Changes are notified within fifteen days.

4. What constitutes a soupçon

The CMF lists explicit triggers in Articles L.561-15 and following. The reportable categories include:

• Sums or operations that the firm knows, suspects, or has reasonable grounds to suspect derive from offences punishable by more than a year of imprisonment, or from tax fraud, or from the financing of terrorism
• Operations whose economic justification or lawful purpose is not apparent
• Operations particularly complex, of an unusually large amount, or carried out in unusual circumstances
• Operations involving high-risk jurisdictions designated by the EU Commission or by France’s own list

For payments firms, the operational reality is that transaction-monitoring rules detect candidates; a human investigator triages; the named déclarant signs off after internal investigation; the SAR is filed.

5. The ERMES portal

TRACFIN’s intake is the ERMES portal — a structured electronic submission channel:

• Single sign-on for the named déclarant
• Structured forms for SARs, plus narrative free-text fields
• File attachments for supporting documentation
• Acknowledgement of receipt with a TRACFIN reference
• Two-way messaging for follow-up requests from TRACFIN to the firm

Unlike the Spanish F19 web form for non-banks (see our SAR Spain piece), ERMES is a single channel for all obligated subjects regardless of size. The form is the same for a global bank and a small EMI, with the structured fields adapting to the type of entity.

6. Timing — without delay

Article L.561-15 sets the standard at “sans délai” — without delay. There is no fixed deadline, but the firm must demonstrate that the internal review and submission happened on a timeline proportionate to the seriousness of the suspicion. In practice:

• Genuine red-flag SARs — submitted within hours of the trigger
• Investigation-derived SARs — submitted within days, not weeks, of the internal investigation closing
• Persistently late filings invite a TRACFIN data-quality review and ACPR follow-up

7. Tipping-off and confidentiality

Article L.574-1 makes it a criminal offence to inform the customer (or the customer’s adviser) that a SAR has been filed or is being considered. The sanction is up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine. The prohibition extends to the firm’s communications, the analyst’s notes accessible to the customer, and any disclosure that could reveal the existence of a SAR.

This applies in parallel with the SEPBLAC, FIU-NL, FIU-Germany and CRF-Luxembourg equivalents — the EU AML directives all require an equivalent regime, transposed nationally.

8. SARs versus systematic reporting

French law also imposes systematic reporting of certain operations regardless of suspicion — the communications systématiques d’informations under Article L.561-15-1. These cover specific transaction categories defined in regulation (cash transactions above thresholds, transfers to/from high-risk jurisdictions). They are filed on the same ERMES infrastructure as SARs but as a different submission type. The Spanish equivalent is the DMO; the conceptual structure is identical.

9. ACPR’s role

TRACFIN receives and analyses SARs. ACPR supervises whether the firm has the right framework to detect and file them. The two functions are independent but interlinked:

• ACPR inspections look at the SAR-filing track record, sample alert investigations, and assess the AML governance.
• TRACFIN feedback to ACPR on filing quality is a recognised input into supervisory ratings.
• Sanctions for AML failures sit with ACPR’s Sanctions Commission. The named déclarant can be sanctioned personally.

10. FAQ

11. What to do, today

• Designate the déclarant and the correspondant before activity in France starts; notify TRACFIN through ERMES.
• Document the internal SAR workflow end-to-end: trigger → investigation → decision → filing → record.
• Train transaction-monitoring rules to the French soupçon threshold, not the Dutch unusual-transaction standard.
• Build the ERMES file generation against your case-management system; manual re-typing at the boundary is the most common source of late filings.
• Coordinate French SARs with home-state filings — the two streams sit in parallel; a single transaction may be reportable in both.

Related: AML representative across the EU · How to file a SAR in Spain · What is SEPBLAC?