The Belgian judiciary has started an investigation into the payment company Wise for laundering criminal money. Wise is a listed company that is active worldwide and is also used by Dutch customers. Money can be transferred cheaply between different countries via the payment service.
According to the Belgian justice system, Wise’s services are frequently used by criminals. Wise Europe, the European headquarters located in Brussels, came into the crosshairs of the Belgian justice system because of the many requests for legal assistance from investigation services from various countries regarding payments that criminals made via Wise. In total, this involved suspicious transactions of more than 500 million euros.
A spokesperson for the Brussels public prosecutor’s office confirmed this NRC and ten European media outlets, working together in the European Investigative Collaborations network (EIC). Last year, NRC published a study into the payments sector with these partners under the name ‘Dirty Payments’.
Wise is a financial services provider that operates under the slogan ‘Money without borders’ and makes it possible to transfer money cheaply between countries.
Most banks use different prices for buying and selling currencies. The average of this is the so-called mid rate, but that is never the rate at which consumers can exchange money. Wise promises to use that middle rate. When making international transactions through Wise, the company uses local bank accounts, so the money never actually crosses borders, meaning there are no international transfer fees.
In 2025, 167.5 billion euros were sent via Wise by a total of 15.6 million customers. The company made a profit of 480 million euros last year, according to the annual report.
Dutch criminal cases
Wise is also used in the Netherlands and the financial service provider regularly appears in criminal cases. For this reason, in recent years the Dutch Public Prosecution Service has asked the judiciary in Belgium to submit requests for information to Wise’s office in Brussels or to freeze funds in accounts. This does not mean that the financial service provider itself is a suspect in those cases, but the multitude of requests from European countries in recent years have led to the Belgian judiciary opening the money laundering investigation into Wise.
The Public Prosecution Service does not want to respond to specific cases in which a request for legal assistance was made to Belgium regarding payments via Wise. A spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service in Amsterdam says “that payment service providers, just like regular banks and institutions, sometimes appear as a source of information in criminal investigations.” Information that NRC has with its partners shows that Wise appeared in criminal investigations surrounding drug trafficking, fraud, money laundering, but also in possible subsidy fraud by a language school.
Wise appears in these kinds of cases all over Europe. Chief prosecutor Henric Fagher of the Swedish Economic Crime Agency says these mainly involve money laundering cases in which services from Wise and similar companies were used. “It is quick and easy to register as a customer, you can often remain more anonymous than with a regular, large Swedish bank. The customer can submit a passport photo of a completely different person, or keep the identity secret in other ways. There are no physical meetings, sometimes the companies do not even have an office. Transactions can take place quickly, and just as quickly the account can be closed.”
A spokesperson for Wise said in a response that combating financial crime is “a challenge” for the entire sector. Wise says it takes this “extremely seriously as a financial institution with more than eighty licenses worldwide, with which we serve more than 19 million active customers worldwide and process approximately 4.7 million transactions every day.”
The company says it works with “the Public Prosecutor in Brussels to answer questions about our activities and does this on a structural basis with supervisors and competent authorities.” “Like any financial institution, we are faced with the reality of increasingly sophisticated malicious actors seeking to abuse our platform, and we continue to invest in advanced technology systems to stay ahead of these ever-evolving threats.”
Previous research by NRC and partners into the payments sector under the name ‘Dirty Payments’ showed that criminals and fraudsters had also resorted to the French listed payment processor Worldline. This company appeared to have covered up fraud by online stores and scammers. Despite warnings from its own risk department, the company consciously chose to retain fraudulent customers because they generated a lot of turnover.
Worldline plays an important role in the international economy with the annual processing of more than 500 billion euros in payment transactions. After the revelations, Worldline shares lost up to 40 percent of their value. Justice in Belgium announced an investigation after the publications. A spokesperson for the Belgian judiciary says that this investigation is still ongoing.
Fines for CEO
It is also not the first time for Wise that the company has been discredited. Last year, Wise’s US subsidiary paid an administrative fine of US$4.2 million (approximately €3.7 million) for failing to meet its anti-money laundering obligations.
And in 2022, the Supervisory Authority of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) fined Wise’s local subsidiary $360,000, also for failing to comply with anti-money laundering requirements. The investigation revealed shortcomings in the risk assessment of certain customers. Wise’s subsidiary did not contest these reprimands.
The British financial regulator in turn imposed a personal fine of 350,000 pounds (about 420,000 euros) on Kristo Käärmann (45), the Estonian CEO and co-founder of Wise, in 2024 for failing to report important personal tax issues. In 2021, the billionaire had already received a fine of a similar amount.
