(Reuters) – Tencent Holdings Ltd could be fined hundreds of millions of yuan for violating some Chinese central bank regulations on its WeChat Pay mobile network, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing sources at the fact of the file.
Financial regulators recently found that WeChat Pay violated China’s anti-money laundering rules and did not comply with “know your customer” and “know your business” rules, according to the newspaper.
Tencent and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The Chinese tech giant’s stock fell around 10% on the news.
According to the newspaper, the PBOC discovered the violations of Chinese rules during a routine inspection of WeChat Pay that ended in late 2021.
The investigation also found that the mobile payments network enabled the transfer and laundering of funds with illicit transactions such as gambling, according to the report.
China imposed a record fine of 18 billion yuan (2.58 billion euros) on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in 2021 for violating anti-monopoly rules.
China recently launched an anti-money laundering campaign.
(Report Maria Ponnezhath in Bangalore, French version Diana Mandiá, edited by Jean-Michel Bélot)
Copyright © 2022 Thomson Reuters