The Estonian unit of Swedbank AB is a suspect in a money-laundering investigation, after a particular white-collar crime investigator with Estonia’s Central Felony Police notified the financial institution that Swedbank AS has been summoned, The Wall Avenue Journal reported on Monday (March 14).
Estonian investigators are mulling whether or not the Swedbank AS was concerned in cash laundering and different felony violations, the report says, noting the financial institution mentioned it “cooperates with the authorities” and shares all data.
“The financial institution has no additional data as to how this investigation will proceed or what the implications of it could be,” Swedbank mentioned in its assertion.
That is the most recent instance of Swedbank discovering itself in authorized scorching water associated to cash laundering.
In 2020, Sweden’s monetary supervisory authority, Finansinspektionen, doled out a 4 billion Swedish kronor (about $397 million on the time) fantastic on the financial institution after discovering severe deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering measures following an investigation with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
In 2019, a Swedish broadcaster reported that billions of {dollars} in suspicious transactions, most of which have been linked to Russia, could have gone by way of Swedbank’s Estonia operations. Swedbank fired Chief Govt Birgitte Bonnesen a month after the report and Swedish police raided the financial institution’s headquarters later that yr.
Swedbank employed Britta Hjorth-Larsen as chief compliance officer earlier this yr.
Associated: Sweden Fines Swedbank $386M For AML Missteps
Swedbank was reportedly processing transactions in Estonia of round 20 billion Euros from Russian non-residents between 2012 and 2016, resulting in the investigation and mega-million-dollar fantastic.
The cash-laundering scandal additionally concerned Swedbank peer financial institution Danske Financial institution. FSA Director Normal Erik Theden informed Reuters on the time that the financial institution had inadequately ready itself for cash laundering within the Baltic operation, and likewise, on a number of events, did not report cases that exposed the scope of the issues.
Swedbank entered the Baltics within the Nineties after the Soviet Union disbanded and have become the biggest financial institution in Estonia.
