Operating without a licence: liability in Albania and the EU

Albania: Law No. 66/2020

• Art. 103(1)(a): the responsible authority (AMF or AKSHI) may impose an administrative fine of ALL 12,000,000 to ALL 18,000,000 on subjects that carry out their activity without the required licence or authorisation.
• The same fine range applies to withholding or hiding information requested by the authorities (Art. 103(1)(b)) and to breaching the market-abuse chapter (Art. 103(1)(c)).
• Art. 103(2): sanctions are imposed for each infringement.
• Art. 102(5): an administrative fine does not stop the authority from filing a criminal complaint with the prosecution. Closing a criminal case does not prevent an administrative fine either.
• Arts. 92(4) and 93(7): if an administrative investigation finds that a criminal offence under the Criminal Code was committed, the authority must file a criminal complaint.
• Art. 104: decisions can be appealed to the administrative court within 45 days. An appeal does not suspend enforcement.

Albania: AML law

Law No. 33/2019 amended the anti-money-laundering law (No. 9917/2008). It added virtual assets and virtual-asset service providers to the law’s scope, which brings them under customer-due-diligence and reporting duties and the AML law’s own sanctions regime. We have not quoted specific AML fine amounts because we could not confirm the current consolidated text in an official source.

Albania: Criminal Code

We could not confirm from an official consolidated text which Criminal Code article, if any, criminalises unlicensed crypto services specifically. We therefore name none. Law 66/2020 itself refers criminal matters to the prosecution, as described above.

EU: MiCA

• Art. 59: a person may provide crypto-asset services in the Union only if it is authorised as a crypto-asset service provider (or is a financial entity notified under Art. 60).
• Art. 111(1)(d): Member States must give competent authorities powers to sanction infringements of Arts. 59, 60, 64 and 65–83. This applies “without prejudice to any criminal penalties”.
• Art. 111(2): these powers include public statements and cease-and-desist orders. For natural persons, they include maximum fines of at least €700,000, or at least twice the profit gained or loss avoided.
• Art. 111(3): for legal persons, maximum fines must be at least €5,000,000, or for Art. 59-type infringements at least 5% of total annual turnover.
• Member States could instead rely on criminal penalties already in their national law by 30 June 2024, and had to notify their rules by 30 June 2025. The actual criminal sanctions therefore differ between countries.
• Art. 143(3): providers already operating under national law could continue until 1 July 2026 at the latest. That transitional period has now ended.

Why it matters for this project

Crypto.al is a concept only. It provides no crypto-asset services and holds no licence or authorisation under Law 66/2020 or MiCA. Any live service would first need the relevant licence.