Belgian authorities are examining €500 million in Wise transactions linked to potential money laundering proceeds of fraud, drug trafficking, and corruption — the latest compliance blow for a company still rebuilding trust with regulators.
Wise, the London-founded money transfer company that recently switched its primary listing to Nasdaq, saw nearly a fifth of its market value wiped out on Monday after The Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that prosecutors in Belgium had quietly opened a criminal inquiry into the firm’s anti-money laundering controls.
The Brussels Public Prosecutor’s office launched the investigation after identifying a pattern: Wise accounts had appeared repeatedly in hundreds of cross-border judicial assistance requests originating from more than thirty countries across Europe. The transactions at the centre of the inquiry amount to roughly €500 million (approximately $583 million). Authorities are now assessing whether those funds represent proceeds from fraud, drug trafficking, or corruption.
Wise confirmed it is engaging with the Brussels prosecutor but pushed back on the characterisation of the investigation as evidence of misconduct. In a statement, the company said it is “currently working with the Brussels prosecutor to respond to queries about our business, as we routinely do with regulators and law-enforcement authorities.” It added that information requests from law enforcement and the filing of suspicious activity reports are standard operating practice for any regulated financial institution, and do not in themselves constitute proof of wrongdoing.
The timing for the new investigation is difficult, though. Just last year, Wise’s US subsidiary paid $4.2 million to settle allegations with six state regulators over weaknesses in its transaction monitoring systems and how it reported suspicious activity. Before that, Abu Dhabi’s financial regulator issued a $360,000 fine for gaps in the company’s AML framework, though no actual laundering was found to have taken place in that case. As recently as 2022, Belgium’s National Bank flagged that Wise held incomplete address documentation for hundreds of thousands of customers, prompting a formal remediation plan that the company says it completed by late 2024.
The investigation also puts Wise in uncomfortable company. Belgium’s prosecutors separately opened a money laundering inquiry into Worldline’s local unit last June, and that company’s shares fell as much as 10% on the news. A growing pattern of regulatory scrutiny across payment processors operating in Belgium suggests the country’s authorities are taking an increasingly aggressive posture toward fintechs that move large volumes of cross-border money.
Wise serves close to 19 million customers worldwide and processed more than $243 billion in international transfers during its most recent financial year. The company says roughly a third of its global workforce is dedicated to compliance and financial crime prevention. The Brussels inquiry remains open, and the firm says it will engage with prosecutors if and when specific findings are formally presented.
