# FATF R.21 — Tipping-off and confidentiality - **Part of:** [[FATF Recommendations]] Financial institutions and their directors, officers and employees who report suspicions in good faith to the FIU must be protected by law from criminal and civil liability for breaching any contractual, legislative, regulatory or administrative restriction on disclosure, even where the underlying criminal activity is unclear or did not in fact occur. They must correspondingly be prohibited by law from tipping off a customer or third party that a suspicious transaction report, or related information, is being or has been filed with the FIU. ## Keyed AMLR articles - [[AMLR Art. 72 - Disclosure to FIU|AMLR Art. 72]] — Disclosure to FIU - [[AMLR Art. 73 - Tipping-off prohibition|AMLR Art. 73]] — Tipping-off prohibition ## Swiss counterparts - [[GwG Art. 11 - Exclusion from criminal and civil liability|GwG Art. 11]] — Both protect good-faith reporters: GwG Art. 11 excludes criminal and civil liability for breach of secrecy or contract for reports under Art. 9 and freezes under Art. 10, extended to StGB Art. 305ter Abs. 2 reports and to reports by audit firms, supervisory organisations and SROs (Abs. 2). *(direct)* ## Authoritative text > [!quote]- FATF Recommendation 21 — text of the Recommendation (FATF Recommendations, updated June 2026); interpretive note not reproduced > **21. Tipping-off and confidentiality** > Financial institutions, their directors, officers and employees should be: > (a) protected by law from criminal and civil liability for breach of any restriction on disclosure of information imposed by contract or by any legislative, regulatory or administrative provision, if they report their suspicions in good faith to the FIU, even if they did not know precisely what the underlying criminal activity was, and regardless of whether illegal activity actually occurred; and > (b) prohibited by law from disclosing ("tipping-off") the fact that a suspicious transaction report (STR) or related information is being filed with the FIU. These provisions are not intended to inhibit information sharing under Recommendation 18.