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Wise under investigation over money laundering control concerns
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Daniel ThomasBusiness reporter
Jaque Silva/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Wise said it had 19 million customers last year
UK money transfer company Wise is being investigated over suspicions criminals used its accounts for money laundering, Belgian prosecutors have told French media.
Wise said it was working with the Brussels prosecutor's office but that "no specific findings have been shared with us to date".
Belgian prosecutors told press agency AFP the investigation, which is focused on Wise's European operations and not its UK business, was "nearing its conclusion".
The confirmation comes after The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported the company's platforms were suspected of being involved in around €500m (£432m) worth of suspicious transactions spanning 30 European countries.
Shares in the company, which is listed in London and the US, fell sharply by 17.5% after the news broke.
A spokesperson for the Brussels prosecutors' office told AFP the investigation was "now at an advanced stage".
"The findings primarily concern the use of Wise accounts for criminal purposes, with indications of non-compliance with anti-money laundering legislation, particularly due to a failure to identify customers and their activities," the spokesperson added.
In a statement, Wise said it was working with the Brussels prosecutor "to respond to queries about our business, as we routinely do with regulators and law-enforcement authorities".
"No specific findings have been shared with us to date. As such, it would be speculative for us to comment on any allegations," the company said.
It said requests for information from law enforcement agencies were "a normal part of operations and are not, in themselves, indicative of non-compliance with anti-money laundering requirements or of any wrongdoing".
TBIJ reported that the Belgian authorities' investigation into Wise began last year.
Founded in London in 2011, Wise is best known for facilitating cross-border money transfers and has more than 19 million customers worldwide. Wise says it processed about 4.7 million transactions a day.
It is dual-listed in the US and UK, having moved its primary stock market listing to the US Nasdaq index last month. Its European business is based in Belgium, from where it serves the rest of Europe and the EU.
'A dark cloud over the business'
Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, said news of the investigation had at one point wiped more than £1bn off Wise's market value on Monday.
"Until any findings are published, this issue is likely to hang like a heavy dark cloud over the business, which has had previous brushes with regulatory authorities," he said.
"If failures of oversight are uncovered it follows that hefty fines could be imposed. More fundamental though could be any potential harm to customer trust and brand integrity."
In 2024, the Financial Times reported that Wise had been told to improve its processes after the National Bank of Belgium found evidence that it lacked a proof of address for hundreds of thousands of customers.
Wise was also fined $4.2m (£3.1m) by six US states over AML compliance violations last year and $360,000 by Abu Dhabi's financial services regulator in 2022.
In each case, Wise said it had subsequently addressed regulators' concerns.
On Monday, the firm said that like every financial institution, it faced "the reality of increasingly sophisticated bad actors attempting to exploit our platform".
It said it took financial crime "extremely seriously" and that around a third of its staff globally were dedicated to protecting customers.
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