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MONACO LAW REVIEW | DECEMBER 2025 | COURTROOM INSIGHTS
SIGNIFICANCE:
The Supreme Court fully exercises a proportionality review,
which now constitutes a standard of internal legality.
In doing so, it positions itself within a logic of effective
judicial protection for individuals, while preserving the
administration’s power to impose penalties. By upholding
a penalty of EUR 10,000 per dwelling (out of a statutory
maximum of EUR 50,000), it shows that proportionality does
not entail leniency but coherence between the seriousness of
the breach and the amount of the penalty.
The broad construction given to Article 4 of Law No. 1.507
of 5 July 2021 ensures a uniform application of the scheme
and strengthens the effectiveness of the policy governing
the Rent-Controlled Housing Sector of Private Tenure in the
Principality.
YS
the revocation was based: the non-compliant activity and the
failure to obtain prior approval.
On the merits, the Supreme Court found that the company
had provided services going beyond the scope of wealth-
management advisory activities, in particular acts of
management and accounting assistance, and that it had altered
its structure without seeking the authorisation of the Minister
of State. Neither the previous inspections nor the entries in
the Trade and Industry Register can, in its view, be relied
upon as a guarantee of lawfulness: no legitimate expectations
can arise from an unlawful tolerance. The principle of legal
certainty is therefore not infringed and the measure, which is
not disproportionate, is not open to challenge on grounds of
ultra vires conduct.
SIGNIFICANCE:
By characterising the revocation of the authorisation for
the establishment as an act of economic administrative
policing, the Supreme Court affi rms the primacy of economic
regulation over the regime of sanctions. The decision
reinforces the exacting approach taken to the administrative
control of regulated economic activities and establishes legal
compliance as a permanent condition of operation, serving to
safeguard public economic policy.
Revocation of a Multi Family Office’s
Authorisation for Its Establishment:
Economic Regulation Prevails over
Legitimate Expectations
Supreme Court of Monaco, 9 April 2025
Case TS 2024-19
BACKGROUND:
A Société Anonyme Monégasque (SAM) operating as a multi
family offi ce challenged the Ministerial Order revoking
the authorisation for its establishment. The revocation was
based, fi rst, on the fact that certain services offered by the
company fell outside its corporate objects, and second, on the
company’s breach of the obligation to obtain prior approval
from the Minister of State for changes in its shareholding
and management. In support of its application, the company
alleged a manifest error of assessment, inadequate reasoning,
breach of the adversarial principle, and an infringement of
legal certainty and proportionality, arguing that previous
administrative inspections had revealed no irregularities.
ANALYSIS:
The Supreme Court dismissed the application and adopted
a strict construction of the regulatory regime applicable
to licensed activities. It held that the authorisation for the
establishment of a multi family offi ce, granted under Law No.
1.439 of 2 December 2016, is intuitu personae and cannot be
maintained once the conditions of competence, integrity or
conformity with the corporate objects are no longer satisfi ed.
The Court characterised the revocation of that authorisation
not as a sanction, but as a measure of administrative policing
intended to safeguard public economic policy and the probity
of wealth-management service providers.
The reasoning of the decision was deemed suffi cient, as the
notifi cation letter clearly set out the two grounds on which
SD
Renunciation of Succession Rights
and Conflict of Laws: The Court of
Revision Clarifies the Transitional
Regime of Monaco’s Private
International Law Code
Court of Revision of Monaco, 25 March 2025
Case R.4075 - Appeal No. 2023-42
BACKGROUND:
Following the death in 2015 of a Swiss national domiciled
in Monaco and owning property in several countries, a
dispute arose between her two sons concerning the scope of
a renunciation of succession rights recorded in Monaco by
one of them. The question was whether that renunciation
produced effect over the entire estate or only over the property
located in Monaco. The Court of First Instance had held that
the succession, opened before the entry into force of Law No.
1.448 of 28 June 2017 establishing the Private International
Law Code, remained governed by the former rules, based
on the distinction between movable property, governed by
the national law of the deceased, and immovable property,
governed by the law of the situs. The Court of Appeal
adopted the opposite position, holding that the 2017 Law,
which is of immediate application, unifi ed the succession
under Monegasque law. This interpretation was quashed
by the Court of Revision, which recalled that the transitional
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