Article: Swedish rival rejected Danske Bank’s “pile of dirty customers”
Swedish rival rejected Danske Bank’s “pile of dirty customers”. Linked to drug dealing and arms smuggling
Swedish money laundering report shows completely new and bleak details about Danske Bank’s money laundering case. Customers in the Estonian branch could be linked to harsh crime and were so suspicious that not even the competitor Swedbank, which has had its own money laundering case, would touch them. The new information exposes the shortcomings of Danske Bank’s own legal investigation, experts believe.
Several companies with accounts in Danske Bank’s scandal-hit Estonian branch were so suspicious that even Swedish competitor Swedbank would not have anything to do with them.
Swedbank, which otherwise had a large group of suspicious customers in the Baltics, simply rejected customers of its Danish rival after they were kicked out of Danske Bank in 2015. The rejection was due, among other things, to the fact that it was unclear who owned the companies.
This is apparent from a comprehensive report on Swedbank’s money laundering case prepared by the US law firm Clifford Chance. The report also shows that some Danske Bank customers were allegedly connected to drug trafficking and fraud, as well as to known criminal networks.
Berlingske reported on Monday that the Swedbank report contains entirely new information on Danske Bank’s money laundering case that led to the closure of Danske Bank in the Baltics, police investigations in several countries and the departure of the former top management.
The report notes, among other things, that one of the two banks’ joint large customer was controlled by two highly shady Russian oligarchs with “good relations with the Kremlin” – the political power in Russia.
But the report also contains other detailed descriptions of Danske Bank’s Estonian client portfolio. Descriptions that are especially sensational when Danske Bank’s own legal investigation, prepared by the law firm Bruun & Hjejle in 2018, does not contain any details about specific clients at all.