Wise Fined $360K for AML Violations by Abu Dhabi Regulator

Money transfer service Wise has been fined $360,000 in Abu Dhabi for violating anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

The Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) said in a statement Tuesday (Aug. 30) that it “found that Wise did not establish and maintain adequate AML systems and controls to ensure full compliance with its AML obligations.”

The FSRA added that it had not uncovered actual instances of money laundering stemming from Wise’s failure to maintain proper controls.

“Additionally, Wise and its senior management cooperated fully with the FSRA’s inquiries and have undertaken substantial steps to remediate each of the issues identified by the FSRA,” the authority said.

According to the FSRA, the breaches included failing to determine the source of funds held by some customers it had identified as high risk before handling transactions on their behalf. The authority also said Wise failed to get approval from senior management “to establish business relationships with a category of customers that it had identified as high risk.”

In a statement emailed to PYMNTS, a Wise spokesperson said the company takes its responsibility to protect its customers and prevent money laundering seriously, noting that it had worked with the FSRA and neither the company or the authority found instances of money laundering or any financial crime.

“Safety and security are of paramount importance and we have robust controls in place to verify customers and to detect and prevent any potentially suspicious activity,” the spokesperson said. “Wise will continue to invest in maintaining and improving our AML processes to the highest standards in partnership with regulators around the world.”

PYMNTS spoke about this issue last month in an interview with Gudmundur Kristjansson, founder and CEO of Icelandic AML software startup Lucinity.

See also: FIs Need Collaboration AND Technology to Win AML War

He noted that while the amount of money spent on AML has risen over the years, the percentage of all money laundering that was actually stopped has gone down.

To address this problem, Kristjansson said it is critical to redesign the toolkit that financial institutions use to fight money laundering. He argued his company has done that by developing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered, user-centric compliance systems that simplify complicated data and help banks and FinTechs improve compliance productivity with less time and financial resources.

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