BRUSSELS — Belgian prosecutors said Monday that they were in the advanced stages of an investigation into the money transfer giant Wise, on suspicions criminals used its accounts for money laundering.
The Brussels prosecutors' office said it opened the probe last year as the British firm's name kept popping up in hundreds of requests for assistance from investigating authorities in other countries.
"The investigation is now at an advanced stage and nearing its conclusion," a spokesperson for the prosecutors' office told AFP, confirming information first reported by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network.
"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 said.
Detectives were probing whether criminal groups used Wise services to launder the proceeds of illicit activities including fraud, corruption and drug trafficking.
Transactions worth more than 500 million euros ($581 million) were being looked at, the prosecutor's office said.
The probe focuses on Wise Europe, the Belgium-headquartered European subsidiary of the firm, which said it was working with prosecutors to respond to queries about its business.
Such requests for information "are a normal part of operations and are not, in themselves, indicative of non-compliance with anti-money laundering requirements or of any wrongdoing," the company said in a statement.
"No specific findings have been shared with us to date," added the company, which has more than 19 million active customers worldwide and processes approximately 4.7 million transactions a day.
Wise says it handled more than $243 billion in cross-border transactions in the financial year 2026.
By midday, its share price on the London Stock Exchange had fallen by nearly 15 percent.
