Ireland was one of nine EU member states which had applied to host the authority, which will have over 400 staff members and is set to become operational in mid-2025.

The final decision on where to locate the authority was made by representatives of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament in an “informal inter-institutional meeting”.

Commenting on the outcome, finance minister Michael McGrath said: “I want to congratulate Frankfurt and the German government on their success in winning this incredibly competitive race to host AMLA.

“From the outset, we were clear that our priority is to deliver on the AML package and we will work now with Germany and all member states to make AMLA a success.

“Ireland made a serious and very credible bid to bring the new authority to our capital city and I want to sincerely thank all of the support we received from fellow member states and MEPs from the Parliament.

“It was clear to me from my discussions in recent days with finance minister colleagues from right across the EU that Ireland’s bid was well regarded and deemed to be of high quality.”

Carroll MacNeill, minister of state for financial services, credit unions and insurance, added: “AMLA is an important step in the delivery of safer streets and stopping criminals profiting from the proceeds of their crime.

“I’m proud of the work the Irish State put into our campaign. I sincerely thank everyone in the Irish financial services industry, colleagues in all political parties, our MEPs and government departments for campaigning on our AMLA bid.

“We made a really strong case for Ireland and put a lot of work into telling the story of Ireland, the capacity that we have to do something of this scale, how strong our financial services sector is and how committed Europeans we are.

“The most important thing of all now is that AMLA works really well to disrupt the proceeds of crime across Europe.”