Money transfer firm Wise is under investigation by prosecutors in Belgium over concerns that its accounts were used to launder the proceeds of fraud, corruption and drug trafficking, the company confirmed today (Monday) after the inquiry was first reported by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The case centers on about €500 million in suspicious transactions. Wise accounts had turned up in hundreds of requests for cross-border judicial assistance from more than 30 European countries, according to the report.
It is the latest in a run of compliance episodes for the company since its 2021 London listing.
Half a Billion Euros in Flagged Transfers
Brussels prosecutors opened the investigation last year after noticing how often Wise accounts appeared in criminal proceedings across the continent, the report said. They are now examining "indications of non-compliance with anti-money laundering" rules by the company, according to the prosecutor's office.
Anti-money laundering rules require payment firms to verify customers, watch for unusual activity and report it to authorities. The half-billion-euro figure and the spread across more than 30 countries reflect how widely Wise is used, and why investigators have taken an interest in its anti-money laundering controls.
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Wise, the London-listed firm once known as TransferWise, says it holds more than 80 regulatory licenses and serves over 19 million active customers, processing around 4.7 million transactions a day.
Wise reported more than $243 billion in cross-border transactions for its 2026 financial year and said it saved customers over $3.3 billion, figures drawn from its own disclosures.
Wise Says the Inquiries Are Incomplete
In its response, Wise said it is working with the Brussels prosecutor and that no specific findings have been shared with it so far. It said "it would be speculative for us to comment on any allegations."
Wise also pointed to its corporate structure as the reason so many requests funnel into Belgium.
Its European business is based there and serves the rest of the region through the EU passporting system, so law-enforcement requests from across the bloc are routed to Belgium rather than to local offices in each country, the company said.
Filing suspicious-activity reports and answering law-enforcement requests are a normal part of operations and do not by themselves signal wrongdoing, Wise said.
The company added that around a third of its global staff works on protecting customers from financial crime.
A Familiar Pattern of Compliance Scrutiny
This is not the first time Wise's controls have drawn official attention. The National Bank of Belgium, which supervises the firm in Europe, forced it into a formal remediation plan after a 2021 review found it lacked proof of address for hundreds of thousands of customers.
The plan required Wise to chase those customers for documents within weeks and freeze accounts that did not comply.
In July 2025, several US state regulators fined Wise $4.2 million over anti-money laundering shortcomings and ordered it to review previously closed accounts. Years earlier, Abu Dhabi's market regulator fined Wise $360,000 for gaps in its AML systems, though it found no evidence that laundering had actually taken place.
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has separately opened an investigation into Chief Executive Kristo Käärmann after a personal tax fine.
Missing or outdated customer records are a recurring theme, with one analysis finding data gaps behind about two-thirds of UK AML penalties over five years.
Rivals Have Drawn Their Own Penalties
Wise is not the only fast-growing fintech facing money-laundering questions as it scales across borders.
Revolut, a London-based rival, was fined €3.5 million by Lithuania's central bank in April 2025 for weak transaction monitoring that let suspicious activity slip through.
Months later, Australia's financial-crime agency penalized Revolut's local unit for filing reports late under anti-money laundering laws. In Belgium itself, ING agreed in May to a €1.6 million settlement over its failure to flag suspicious transactions tied to a former EU commissioner.
Belgian authorities have been tightening financial-crime enforcement, with plans for a dedicated national financial prosecutor and a new criminal code that took effect in April.
Wise said it would keep its shareholders and the market informed at the appropriate time. The company has not been charged, and prosecutors have not published any findings.
