Danske Bank money laundering scandal

One of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky's stolen Hermitage Capital Management subsidiaries, Diron Trade LLP which had a Great Britain postal box, assisted in $5.8 billion in money laundering transfers between Swedbank's Baltic subsidiaries and Danske Bank during 6 months in 2010 and 2011 according to SVT.

[11] During that time, Aivars Bergers, a board member of Latvia's leading pro-Russian party Harmony and one of its largest financiers, received EUR 270,000 from Diron Trade LLP and Murova Systems LLP, a company which has a Great Britain postal box and is associated with the Azerbaijani Laundromat in which $2.9 billion was money laundered through Danske Bank's Estonia branch.

Despite these differences in systems and language, the Danske Bank did not implement changes that would make it easier to control the headquarters in Denmark.

[15] The whistleblower was later identified as Howard Wilkinson, former head of trading for Danske Bank in Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania.

[17] Some of these transactions have been linked to the Russian Government and were done via shell companies that were registered in the United Kingdom, Cyprus and New Zealand, as well as other banks in Latvia and Moldova.

According to the report, during a meeting in June 2014, the bank's board members "were interested in the branch’s earnings, while the minutes have not recorded any comments on the significant AML challenges.

Estonian police discovered the body of Aivar Rehe, who was in charge of the branch from 2007 until 2015, during a search operation after his disappearance that began two days earlier.

[24] At the same time, Danish prosecutors charged Henrik Ramlau-Hansen, the bank's former finance director, with failing to prevent the suspicious transactions.

[26] In December 2022, Danske Bank pled guilty and agreed to a $2 billion fine in a case from the United States Department of Justice.