Clients discovering that a Montenegrin bank will not execute a transfer usually assume a court order sits behind it. Often none does. The Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Act gives the financial intelligence unit a direct power to order a suspension, exercisable in hours, without a judicial step and — in defined circumstances — orally.
It is also a strictly time-limited power, and understanding the clock is the difference between a disrupted week and a lost transaction.
Article numbers below are from the Zakon o sprečavanju pranja novca i finansiranja terorizma, published in "Službeni list CG" br. 110/2023, 65/2024, 24/2025, 41/2026 — a decision of the Constitutional Court — and 59/2026, read on 5 September 2026. General information, not advice on a particular matter.
The power, and its threshold
Article 93(1) allows the financial intelligence unit to require an obliged entity by order to suspend the execution of a transaction, and to prohibit access to a safe-deposit box, for no more than 72 hours, where it assesses that there are grounds for suspicion or bases of suspicion that the funds or other property derive from criminal activity or from money laundering, from associated predicate criminal offences, or are intended for the financing of terrorism.
Two features of that threshold matter to anyone on the receiving end. It is a suspicion standard assessed by the unit itself, not a finding by a court. And it reaches safe-deposit access as well as payments — the box is closed by the same order that stops the transfer.
Article 89 point 3 confirms the power from the other direction, in the list of the unit's functions: it may order an obliged entity to temporarily suspend a transaction and to monitor the client's financial operations on a continuous basis. The suspension and the surveillance are a single toolkit.
The clock, in detail
This is the part worth knowing precisely, because everything about the response depends on it.
| Step | Provision | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Order suspending a transaction / barring safe-deposit access | Art. 93(1) | Up to 72 hours |
| Where the last day falls on non-working days, the order may extend it | Art. 93(4) | +48 hours, with a hard cap of seven days in total |
| Where the unit acts on a suspicious-transaction report under Art. 66(6) | Art. 93(3) | The order is issued within 24 hours of receiving that report |
| The unit notifies the competent authorities | Art. 93(2) | Without delay, at the latest within 24 hours |
| Those authorities must act within their own powers and report back | Art. 93(9) | Without delay, at the latest 72 hours from the suspension |
The seven-day figure in Article 93(4) is an absolute outer limit on this power, not a routine extension: it applies where the last day of the 72 hours falls on non-working days, and the total period of suspension or safe-deposit prohibition may not exceed seven days.
What the Act does not do is give the unit a power to extend beyond that. If the funds are to remain frozen after that point, it has to come from somewhere else — the competent authorities that Article 93(2) notifies, acting under their own powers within the Article 93(9) window.
The order can be oral
Article 93(6) requires the unit to deliver the order to the obliged entity in electronic or written form.
Article 93(7) then creates the exception that surprises foreign counsel: for reasons of urgency, or other circumstances connected with the execution of transactions, the order may be issued orally, provided it is delivered in electronic or written form within 24 hours of the oral order.
Article 93(8) requires the obliged entity's authorised person for the prevention of money laundering — the compliance officer appointed under the Act — to make a note of the receipt of an oral order.
Article 93(5) puts the obligation on the obliged entity in one line: it must take the measures without delay.
For a client, the practical consequence is that the first evidence of the order may be a file note at the bank rather than a document in anyone's hands, and the written version may legitimately follow a day later. Asking the bank for "the order" on the first afternoon is not necessarily a question it can answer.
The cross-border version
Two further provisions extend the same mechanism across borders, and they are the ones that catch international structures.
Article 109(1) allows the unit, on the reasoned initiative of a foreign financial intelligence unit or another foreign authority competent for preventing and detecting money laundering and terrorist financing, to order the suspension of a transaction or prohibit safe-deposit access for up to 72 hours. Article 109(2) applies the Article 93 procedure to that case, so the same clock and the same formalities govern it.
Article 109(3) is the safeguard, and it is a real one: the unit may refuse the foreign initiative where, on the facts and circumstances set out in it, it assesses that insufficient grounds for suspicion have been given — and it must inform the requesting authority, stating the reasons for the refusal.
Article 110 runs the mechanism in the opposite direction: the unit may itself submit an initiative to a foreign financial intelligence unit or authority to suspend a transaction or bar safe-deposit access abroad, on the same suspicion threshold.
So a Montenegrin transaction can be stopped on a foreign authority's initiative, and a transaction abroad can be stopped on Montenegro's — in both cases through an administrative channel between units rather than through mutual legal assistance.
The other way a transfer stops: incomplete payment data
Not every blocked transfer involves the intelligence unit at all. A second, quieter mechanism operates entirely between payment service providers, and it produces the same practical result for the client.
Article 37(1) requires the payee's payment service provider to adopt an internal act, based on a risk assessment, governing how it acts — including, where necessary, ex-post or real-time monitoring — when the payment order form or electronic message accompanying a transfer of funds does not contain the accurate and complete data required by Article 35.
Article 37(2) then requires that internal act to specify when the provider will:
- refuse the transfer of funds;
- suspend execution of the transfer until the missing data are received, which it must request from the intermediary or from the payer's provider; or
- execute the transfer and request the missing data simultaneously or afterwards.
So a suspension on this route is a decision of the receiving institution under its own risk policy, not an order from the state — which is why the answer to "who stopped my payment" is not always the same.
Repeat offending on the sending side has consequences too. Article 37(3) obliges the payee's provider to warn a payer's provider that repeatedly fails to supply accurate and complete data, and to set a deadline for compliance. Article 37(4) then requires it to refuse future transfers from that provider, or to limit or terminate the business relationship with it. Article 37(5) requires it to notify the Central Bank of Montenegro about that provider and the measures taken.
The two mechanisms can also connect. Article 37(6) requires the payee's provider to assess whether the missing data themselves constitute grounds for suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing and, if so, to report to the financial intelligence unit — which is where the Article 93 power becomes available. Article 37(7) requires a note to be made and retained where it concludes there are no such grounds.
For a client whose transfer has stalled, the practical implication is that the first diagnostic question is not legal but factual: was the payment message complete? An incomplete originator or beneficiary field can produce a suspension under Article 37(2) point 2 that resolves as soon as the missing data arrive, without any state involvement at all.
What else the unit can do with the file
The suspension power sits inside a much wider information function, and clients frequently underestimate how far the file travels.
Article 89 point 1 authorises the unit to collect, process and analyse data on natural and legal persons, their property, suspicious, cash and other transactions, business activities, bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes, and to produce and forward financial analyses. Article 89 point 2 authorises it to receive data from obliged entities, competent and supervisory authorities, other legal and natural persons, foreign units, foreign authorities and international organisations, including authorities competent for the confiscation of property.
Article 108(1) allows the unit, on its own initiative and without any request, to send information on bank accounts and safe-deposit boxes, financial information, financial analyses and other data to a foreign financial intelligence unit, to other foreign authorities, to international organisations, to a foreign authority competent for the confiscation of property, and to foreign supervisory authorities. Article 108(2) requires suspicious-transaction reports concerning an EU member state to be forwarded promptly to that state's unit. Article 108(3) allows the unit to attach conditions and limitations on the use and onward transmission of what it sends.
Article 89 point 9 adds a power with consequences well beyond a single transaction: the unit may propose to the National Security Council that legal and natural persons be included on the national list of designated persons under the legislation on international restrictive measures.
What actually happens next
The structure of the Act suggests the shape of a response, and it is not primarily a challenge to the order itself.
The suspension is short by design and cannot be extended past seven days under Article 93(4). What determines the outcome is what the competent authorities do inside the Article 93(9) window of 72 hours from the suspension — whether they take a step under their own powers, or whether the period simply expires.
That makes the productive work evidential rather than procedural: establishing the origin of the funds to the standard the obliged entity needs, since the same Act requires it to establish source of funds in enhanced-diligence cases, and doing it inside a window measured in days. It also makes the obliged entity's compliance officer the practical counterpart, because Article 93(5) obliges the entity to act and Article 93(8) makes that officer the person holding the record.
Article 89 point 10 is worth knowing about for context: at least annually, the unit publishes a report with statistics on suspicious transactions reported, cases investigated, persons prosecuted and convicted, and property frozen or confiscated. The base rates for this power are, in principle, public.
If a payment or a box has been stopped
If a Montenegrin bank has suspended a transfer, refused to release funds or closed access to a safe-deposit box, send us what the institution has actually told you, the transaction documentation and the evidence of where the funds came from. We will identify whether the file has the shape of an Article 93 order, what the Article 93(4) outer limit means for timing, and what has to be assembled inside the Article 93(9) window — and where the matter has a foreign element, whether Article 109 is in play. The underlying obligations that generate these reports are in AML obligations for businesses, the enhanced-diligence layer in Montenegro's PEP register, the payment-route rules for property in paying for property in Montenegro, and how we run contentious files sits with our criminal law practice.
