EXCLUSIVE — HEURO: The Dark Side of the €600 Million Euro Stablecoin

It's the kind of launch that caught nearly the entire European digital asset ecosystem off guard. All of it, really.

On Monday, French company Heuro SAS announced it had issued €600 million worth of its new HEURO stablecoin, with part of the reserve set to be invested in French sovereign bonds.

An operation "nobody saw coming," which earned Heuro a glowing endorsement from France's Finance Minister Roland Lescure, quoted directly in the company's press release:

"This new issuance nearly doubles the global outstanding supply of euro-denominated stablecoins — in a market that has until now been overwhelmingly dollar-dominated — and shows our European ecosystem the way forward in strengthening our sovereignty and the euro's role in the global economy. This success illustrates France's attractiveness for tokenized finance players, and the security and competitiveness that Europe's MiCA regulation provides."

Virtually unknown just days ago, the project is now the world's largest euro stablecoin, leapfrogging established players like Circle's EURC (€364 million) and Société Générale-Forge's EURCV (€104 million), both of which have been around for years.

Except that since the announcement, unease has been spreading through the corridors of Paris Blockchain Week, one of the industry's biggest global conferences, held this week.

Everyone there was talking about one thing: HEURO.

And not with anything close to the minister's enthusiasm.

Four Name Changes and an Opaque Hong Kong Holding Company

"Several things are surfacing, and it wouldn't be surprising if their electronic money institution license — the one that allows them to issue a stablecoin from within the EU — gets suspended soon," a source close to the government told us.

So what exactly is being held against Heuro? On paper, the company has the required regulatory credentials, including a listing among EMT stablecoin issuers on the register of ESMA, Europe's financial watchdog.

"A number of warning signs have piled up in a short period of time," another source confirmed. "The shareholding structure of the issuing entity is offshore, and the company has changed its name at least four times."

The Big Whale has independently confirmed this information.

Before becoming Heuro SAS in December 2025, the company had previously operated under the names Unirpay and Harmoniie SAS since its founding in October 2017. Adding to the confusion, it also uses the trade name OuiTrust.

Until recently, the company was run exclusively by executives of Chinese nationality. A new structure took shape in 2025: Heuro SAS, wholly owned by EasyEuro Technology Limited, registered in Hong Kong.

Who actually owns it? That's unclear, thanks to the opacity of Hong Kong's corporate registry system.

But the French-registered entity does feature some well-known — and recently recruited — figures.

The company has been chaired since December 2025 by Patrick Starkman, who previously led the French arm of online payment solution Checkout (where he served as country manager until December 2025) and currently holds the role of secretary general at AFEPAME, the French association of payment institutions.

Marie-Laure Paldi, who until recently worked at the ACPR — France's banking and stablecoin regulator — has served as CEO since November 2025.

"When you see an entity that keeps changing its legal name while the same beneficial owners in Hong Kong stay in place, that's a pattern that should set off alarm bells immediately," one observer noted.

When contacted, Claire Balva, CEO of Adan (the professional association representing French crypto firms), said she wasn't familiar with the company. "We reached out to them after their announcement, but our message has gone unanswered so far."

A €600 Million Stablecoin That Nobody Can Actually Buy

For now, it is impossible for ordinary users to purchase this stablecoin — it isn't listed on any exchange.

"They issue over half a billion euros' worth of stablecoins, and you can't even get your hands on them? That makes no economic sense," one expert pointed out.

When asked about this, Patrick Starkman told The Big Whale that partnerships with crypto giants Binance, KuCoin, and Bybit (all companies of Chinese origin) were forthcoming.

>> Patrick Starkman (HEURO): "We are now the leading euro stablecoin issuer"

The communications team assured us that "teams are working on it," but the sheer accumulation of red flags has bred deep skepticism.

On top of that, the minting process — how the stablecoins are actually created on the blockchain — has been anything but textbook.

First came an initial mint on Ethereum: a large batch of tokens issued from a single source, then distributed across multiple wallets — a setup that could create the illusion of many individual investors. Next, those tokens were burned on Ethereum. And finally, re-issued on Solana.

"It's a classic manipulation playbook: you artificially inflate apparent demand, then obscure the trail by switching chains," one observer explained.

Then there's a questionable partnership that raises even more concerns.

A Trojan Horse for Chinese Funds of Dubious Origin?

According to our reporting, the company was — at least until early 2026 — routing operations through Finetix Limited SRL, a payment service provider based in Romania that has already been sanctioned by local authorities. Finetix had claimed to hold a credit institution license it did not actually possess.

"We're talking about fraudulent regulatory status — and this is the PSP serving as the payment rail for Heuro's euro-denominated operations," one expert explained.

According to an investigation by the research platform FinTelegram, published in February 2026, Finetix was acting as the "contractual recipient" for euro deposits flowing toward MEXC, a Chinese-origin crypto exchange not authorized to operate in the European Union.

Under this arrangement, SEPA Instant transfers would pass through Heuro SAS (via its OuiTrust brand) before being routed by Finetix to the offshore platform.

"The choice of Romania isn't random — it's an EU member state where scrutiny of what's really going on with transactions is, let's say, less rigorous than in France or Germany," our source noted.

The risk? That funds of dubious origin flowing from unregulated crypto exchanges could be converted into HEURO stablecoins through this Romanian intermediary.

"If you have a stablecoin issuer whose incoming flows aren't clean — and that's exactly the question this whole setup raises — and that issuer parks its reserves in sovereign bonds, then you've got a mechanism that could potentially launder money of questionable origin into public debt holdings."

"You're turning something that may not be gold into gold. And when you consider the stakes around debt financing and sovereignty, this becomes a top-tier issue."

What are the risks?

"One theory is that this project is a Trojan horse," the source explained.

"The first layer is the Eurasian rail: creating a gateway into the European financial system for actors who have no right to be there."

"The second layer is more ambitious. By becoming a massive issuer of euro-backed stablecoins, the entity could end up mechanically holding enormous amounts of European public debt as reserves."

"Their endgame could be to become the Tether of Europe. Hold vast quantities of government bonds, overtake Circle and SG-Forge, overtake everyone else. And at that point, they'd be impossible to dislodge. That's what you'd call the digital Silk Road."

How Did This Project Win Public Praise from the Finance Minister — and the Regulator's Blessing?

When contacted through official channels, both regulators — the ACPR and the AMF — declined to answer The Big Whale's questions.

Off the record, however, numerous government insiders say they are "extremely embarrassed" by how events unfolded, culminating in the Finance Minister's public endorsement.

According to our information, the ACPR (which granted the company its electronic money institution license in 2021) is expected to reopen the file very soon.

"For three years, this entity has passed through the ACPR without triggering any major alarm," a well-placed source explained. "I believe they declared a deliberately narrow scope of activity — no crypto conversion, no custody, just payment facilitation. That way, they never had to disclose the actual setup they had with the exchanges. The ACPR probably took them at their word."

The problem, as many crypto industry players told The Big Whale, is that this debacle risks tarnishing the reputation of the most serious operators in the space.

"More and more banks are building or preparing to launch euro stablecoins that will play a critical role in the financial system of tomorrow. This is really not the time for a blunder like this," a banking source concluded.