SWEDEN FINES BANK FOR MONEY LAUNDERING

A big Scandinavian bank has been fined 1 billion kronor ($150 million) by Sweden’s financial supervisory authority for failing to stop money laundering, the latest in a series of banks from the region to get caught handling dirty money, the Associated Press (AP) reported on June 25, 2020.

The fine was slapped on Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB, known as SEB, for "deficiencies in identifying and managing the risk of money laundering" at its Baltic subsidiaries. The agency's investigation covered the period from 2015 to the start of 2019.

Several Nordic banks have been found to have handled dirty money, largely through subsidiaries in the Baltic countries that they had acquired in previous years. Among the biggest is Denmark's Danske Bank, which has admitted to massive money laundering at its Estonian subsidiary.

An internal investigation found that some 200 billion euros ($226 billion) that had flowed through the bank’s accounts from 2007 to 2015 was suspicious in nature. Last year, Swedish authorities launched an investigation into Swedbank, another Swedish bank with links to the Danske Bank case. The probe will look at whether 15 of Swedbank’s largest shareholders received information that the bank was connected to the money laundering scandal before a TV report last week broke the news.  Swedish broadcaster SVT reported that Swedbank customers had been able to funnel at least 40 billion kronor ($6.1 billion) between Swedbank and Danske Bank in Estonia.