The Federal Reserve Board fined Deutsche Bank $186 million regarding violations of previous consent orders addressing alleged sanctions and anti-money laundering (AML) weaknesses and control failures relating to the bank’s relationship with Danske Bank’s Estonia branch.
The penalty, levied against Deutsche Bank, its New York branch, and other of its U.S. affiliates, is comprised of two parts. Deutsche Bank was fined more than $140 million regarding its alleged violations of the sanctions and AML orders and $46.2 million regarding its relationship with Danske Estonia, the Fed detailed in a consent order published Wednesday.
The Fed faulted Deutsche Bank for lacking adequate BSA/AML internal controls in clearing more than $267 billion in transactions for the money laundering-plagued branch from 2007-15. Danske Bank last year agreed to pay more than $2 billion for its Estonia failures.
[December 13 2022 Danske Bank to forfeit $2 billion for defrauding American banks ]
The Danish Danske bank pleaded guilty to bank fraud on Tuesday in a lawsuit filed in the US over the bank’s activities in the country, according to the US Justice Department.
Denmark’s largest bank also agreed to forfeit $2 billion (€1.88 billion) after it admitted defrauding American banks between 2008 and 2016 by allowing, through its Estonia branch, access to US banks for high-risk customers who were neither Estonian nor residents of Estonia, including some in Russia.
https://www.dw.com/en/us-danish-danske-bank-pleads-guilty-in-fraud-case/a-64083451
[April 25 2021 Danske Bank 200 billion euros moneylaundering charges dropped against execs ]
Thomas Borgen, Danske’s chief executive until late 2018, had the charges dropped by Denmark’s state prosecutor, in a case that involves suspicious transactions of some 200 billion euros ($224 billion) that passed through Danske Bank’s Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015, Henrik Ramlau-Hansen, the bank’s former chief financial officer, and Lars Stensgaard Morch, its former head of business banking, also had charges against them dropped.
June 10 2020 called on wash trades by FSA ]
The Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) said that Danske Bank A/S had misinformed the financial market by facilitating so-called “wash trades”, in which the same person sells and buys securities, between August 12, 2016 and February 22, 2019. Such trades could misleadingly prop up or devalue the price of securities,. The FSA said it did not believe Danske Bank had intentionally facilitated trades with itself, but the transactions reflected flaws in the bank’s market surveillance.
[December 20 2019 Russian Laundromat: Swedbank sanction processes start ]
Sweden’s Economic Crime Authority is carrying out a search at Swedbank’s head office in relation to an ongoing investigation into whether the bank breached insider trading regulations, the authority said on December 18 2019. Sweden’s Economic Crime Authority in February launched an investigation into Swedbank over allegations the lender informed some investors of a news report linking the bank to a Baltic money-laundering scandal before the information was made public.
Sweden’s Swedbank (SWEDa.ST) repeated on December 20 2019 that there was a risk it had been used to launder money, in a response to requests for comment by the Estonian and Swedish financial watchdogs on their separate probes into the bank.
[November 2 2019]
https://twitter.com/karolcummins/status/1188636554979205120
The Swedish and Estonian authorities now have decided upon initiating sanction processes, Swedbank is alleged to have processed suspect gross transactions of up to 20 billion euros ($22 billion) a year from mostly Russian non-residents through Estonia from 2010 to 2016
[October 1 2019 ‘historical shortcomings’ jobs lost ]
https://twitter.com/ReutersBiz/status/1178788060466692096
Stockholm-based Swedbank’s former Estonia chief executive Robert Kitt, who had been suspended since June, has now lost his job. Vaiko Tammevali, who had been chief financial officer at Swedbank in Estonia before being suspended in June, also lost his job, as did Kaie Metsla, the current head of the bank’s private customer division. The decision to remove the executives was based on “information concerning historical shortcomings connected to anti-money laundering work,”
[Match 9 2019 Now Nordea/Luminor, Swedbank ]
https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1103599753814773767
Leaked documents indicate that at least 700 million euros — part of it from suspicious transfers — ended up in accounts held in Nordea banking group, and that some 200 million was transferred to accounts in Finland. Nordea’s customers also included hundreds of sham companies whose real owners are almost impossible to identify. The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian operations of Norway’s largest bank DNB were merged in 2017 with Nordea’s business in the region to form Luminor, the third-largest Baltic bank. Nordea and DNB agreed to sell a 60 percent stake in Luminor to a Blackstone private equity consortium for 1 billion euros in September and said the deal was expected to close during the first half of 2019.
Trump owed Daewoo when he was president
At least 40 billion Swedish crowns ($4.25 billion) had moved between Swedbank and Danske accounts between 2007 and 2015. Swedbank AB allegedly handled $176 million connected to the death of Sergei Magnitsky. Swedbank provided services to Russian oligarchs and deposed Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych it is charged.
77 Swedbank Baltic accounts received $18 million from 13 Danske Estonian accounts
The biggest share of the $176 million in transactions was tied to Ukio Bank, a Lithuanian bank that was declared bankrupt in 2013
590 Swedbank accounts in the Baltics and Sweden received $158 million from 102 Ukio accounts
50 Swedbank accounts in Sweden received around $2.4 million from 31 Ukio accounts opened by shell companies located in Belize and the British Virgin Islands.
The money flowed in both directions: 91 Swedbank accounts held by individuals and businesses sent $92 million to 46 Ukio accounts
[February 21 2019 enter SEC, Estonia arrests 10 ]
Estonia has arrested 10 former employees of the local branch of Danske Bank as part of an international investigation into alleged money laundering.”The suspects are the so-called first line of defence, client managers whose job was to make sure money laundering does not happen,” prosecutor-general Lavly Perling said.
The 10 people have not been charged, but under Estonian law can be held for 48 hours without formal charges.
“The information disclosed by (Swedish TV) is very serious and together with our Estonian colleagues we will thoroughly investigate the matter to make a comprehensive and in-depth assessment,” the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority’s Director General Erik Thedeen said in a statement.
[February 20 2019]
Allegations are linking Swedbank to suspicious transactions in the country involving Danske Bank, Estonia’s state prosecutor said: at least 40 billion Swedish crowns ($4.30 billion) had been transferred between accounts at Swedbank and Danske in the Baltics between 2007 and 2015. “This does not automatically mean (or exclude) that a bank receiving payments in a possible money laundering operation has committed a crime or has breached the bank’s requirement to know its client and identify suspicious circumstances,”
50 of Swedbank’s customers that show several risk indicators of suspected money laundering have funneled a total of USD 5.8 billion through the bank.
[January 7 2019]
In the case of Danske Bank, the names of the original individuals and organizations believed to have engineered the illicit flows of cash from Russia and Azerbaijan are still unknown. So, too, are the beneficial owners of the UK-based companies registered in various Caribbean islands that accepted the funds. Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWOs), were created under the British Criminal Act of 2017 and have been effective since the start of 2018.
We are currently looking for a Transformation Consultant who can help us enable the agile transformation of Danske Bank and realize our ambitious strategic targets.
Agile Transformation supports and facilitates the adoption of agile ways of working in Danske Bank across all business units. We are a group of engaged colleagues working with customer experience, organizational capability building, agile coaching and agile execution as well as high performing teams. We work cross-functionally and liaise and collaborate closely with the global development organizations of 2,600 employees who handle our customers end-to-end in our endeavour to adopt agile ways of working.
. What is clear is that the Danske Bank scandal has underscored that Russia’s economic revival and gradual integration into the global economy hang in the balance. Two hundred billion euros is a substantial sum of money, but only a fraction of the estimated $800 billion held offshore by rich Russians. To put this number in perspective, it is equal to the current wealth of all Russian households
Paul Manafort : to pay $3.2 million to settle federal charges
[ October 17 2018]
Jacob Aarup-Andersen, 40, the Danske board’s choice to take over the helm of Denmark’s biggest bank, was rejected by the country’s financial regulator on the grounds that he wasn’t experienced enough.“This can’t be interpreted as anything other than a slap in the face,” said Per Hansen, economist at investment firm Nordnet.
The Danske Bank Scandal Is the Tip of the Iceberg According to the report, two of the main perpetrators were the Russian and Azerbaijani “Laundromat” operations.
The Russian and Azerbaijani Laundromats were central to the fraud taking place at Danske Bank’s Estonian branch. The Laundromats were criminal financial vehicles that helped to launder money worldwide through shell companies by using fraud, the rigging of state contracts, and customs and tax evasion. The Russian Laundromat worked between 2011 and 2014 by creating 21 “core” companies in the United Kingdom, Cyprus, and New Zealand.
These companies generated fake debt, then obtained a Moldovan court order that required 19 Russian companies pay these debts to Moldova-based Moldindconbank and Latvia-based Trasta Komercbanka. Once out of Russia, the money was transferred all around the world, accounting for 26,746 payments totaling $20.8 billion to 5,140 companies with accounts at 732 banks in 96 countries. At Danske Bank, 177 customers received payments from these core companies.
Similarly, the Azerbaijani Laundromat used a series of shell companies to disguise the origin of $2.9 billion that is suspected to come from the family of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. This Laundromat worked as a slush fund to pay off politicians, siphon off private funding, and launder money. While much of this scheme is still under investigation, 75 customers of Danske Bank are implicated, and the Estonian branch handled the accounts of all four major companies involved in the Azerbaijani Laundromat.
[October 11 2018 Andrei Kozlov murdered for informing to Danes ? ]
Andrei Kozlov, the first deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank traveled to Estonia in the summer of 2006 to warn the authorities that a money-laundering scheme had been established in the tiny Baltic financial sector: the $200 billion Danske Bank scandal. Sept. 13, 2006, three strangers approached Kozlov at the Spartak Moscow sports complex in northeast Moscow. They fired a volley of shots that struck Kozlov and his driver.
Kozlov became the third dead Russian who can be linked to the Danske scandal after Alexander Perepilichnyy, whose company used the bank’s Estonia branch, died in suspicious circumstances in Britain, and Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was investigating the theft of $230 million when he died in Russian custody. It is claimed that the vast majority of the proceeds of that theft were laundered through Danske Bank.
[ October 6 2018 Lantana Trade had Putin family as beneficial owners ]
Danske Bank (DANSKE.CO) said in a statement it had “received requests for information from the US Department of Justice in connection with a criminal investigation relating to the bank’s Estonian branch conducted by the DoJ,” and was cooperating. News of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation has caused panic. The bank’s shares were dumped and some bondholders are even wondering whether Danske might start having trouble making interest payments on its riskiest debt.The scale of the bank’s Estonian money laundering scandal has shocked the world. Over a nine-year period, about $235 billion flowed through a tiny unit in the Baltic country, much of it suspicious, Danske said last month. Besides the U.S. probe, Danske is being investigated in Denmark, Estonia, Switzerland and the U.K. Separate investigations will examine the extent to which the bank’s regulators and auditors acted appropriately.
It said of the approximately 6,200 accounts it had examined so far that most were linked to clients registered in Russia, Britain and the British Virgin Islands and “the vast majority of these customers have been deemed suspicious”.
[September 20 2018 Russians warned Danes about laundered billions in 2007 ]
Danske Bank’s (DANSKE.CO) chief executive Thomas Borgen quit on Wednesday, September 19, following an investigation into payments totaling some 200 billion euros ($234 billion) through its Estonian branch, many of which the Danish bank said were suspicious. Denmark wanted to avoid a scenario like the one in Latvia where ABLV was accused by U.S. authorities of covering up money laundering, leading to the bank being denied U.S. dollar funding and collapsing.
– I’m sorry for that. Although the external attorney’s opinion concludes that I have lived up to my legal obligations, I think the right thing for all parties is that I retire, Thomas F. Borgen writes in the announcement. In 2017 Thomas Borgen received a total salary of NOK 17.4 million. 11.5 million were pay, pension amounted to 2.2 million kroner, while bonuses in the form of cash and shares amounted to 3.7 million kroner.
According to the details of the contract, Thomas Borgen can leave the bank with at least NOK 13.7 million, which is the basic salary.
At the same time, Thomas Borgen will be able to keep his shares and the shares he has received as part of his incentive program.
At the end of 2017, Thomas Borgen had 18,121 shares in his incentive program and owned 40,902 shares. At Wednesday’s rate, it is worth a total of NOK 9.6 million.
Born: March 27, 1964, Sarpsborg, Norway
Thomas Borgen is a Bachelor of Business Organization from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and holds an MBA from Syracuse University in New York.
The bank is being investigated by the Danish bakers’ police, Estonia and allegedly also the US authorities.
In June 2007, Danish Financial Supervisory Authority received a letter in which the Russian Central Bank expressed concern about so-called non-resident customers in Sampo Bank Estonia, purchased by Danske Bank in the same year. The letter states that customers in Sampo Bank participated in ‘financial transactions of dubious origin’ for ‘billions of rubles monthly’.
“The transactions mentioned may be aimed at tax and customs evasion when importing goods,” the Russian Central Bank wrote in the warning and continued:
“Or they can be associated with criminal activity in their purest form, including money laundering.”
Thus, Danske Bank missed “this first clear opportunity” to respond, concludes law firm Bruun Hjejle, who has prepared the survey.
Hue and Cri 