Swedbank CEO Birgitte Bonnesen was fired on March 28 over the bank’s growing money laundering scandal, a day after police raided the bank’s offices in Stockholm.
Investigative reports by Swedish media found that the bank handled billions of euros worth of laundered money from foreign accounts. Like in the associated Danske Bank money laundering fiasco, most of the cash came from Russia.
However, some companies that had accounts in Swedbank were linked to ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and his now-jailed American adviser, Paul Manafort, who also served as former campaign manager of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Despite the bank having been aware of these connections since 2017, according to documents seen by Swedish broadcaster SVT, Bonnesen had made statements in 2018 denying any connection between Swedbank and money laundering.
In a statement, the bank said that it lost confidence in Bonnesen. The forced resignation will not prevent her from collecting about $2.4 million more as part of her contract.
A leak of transaction documents between the now-disgraced Danske Bank and Swedbank analyzed by Swedish broadcaster SVT revealed $5.8 billion in high-risk money passing through Swedbank and Danske Bank’s Baltic branches. Some of the same companies that were involved in the Danske Bank scandal were also involved with Swedbank.
Yanukovych was one of these high-risk customers. Over his years in office, Yanukovych and his associates stole tens of billions from Ukraine, secreting it away across various European banks before he was forced to flee the country during the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
One entity at the heart of the ongoing Swedbank scandal is Vega Holding Ltd, one of the shell companies used by Yanukovych to launder money. Vega Holding had an account in Swedbank’s Lithuanian branch.
According to documents seen by SVT, 3.7 million euros were funneled out of Ukraine, eventually ending up in Vega Holding’s Swedbank’s accounts. Ukrainian Prosecutor Andriy Radionov had stated that this money was linked to a suspected bribe disguised as a book deal.
The leaked documents also reveal that separate sums of 12.6 million euros and $5.6 million were transferred into Swedbank by companies tied to Yanukovych.
Additionally, both Swedbank and Danske Bank had accounts from companies tied to Milltown Corporate Services Ltd., which was investigated by Ukrainian officials for laundering money stolen from the state by the fugitive president.
Vega Holding had also donated money to the Project on Transitional Democracies, a California-based organization that was allegedly taking money to arrange meetings between Yanukovych and U.S. officials, with Manafort’s involvement, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and a report by Vice News.
Experts had previously told the Kyiv Post that no European economy is safe from money laundering and the Nordic countries’ good reputation as honest and transparent democracies made them an attractive target to hide stolen money.
As with Danske Bank, laundered money usually leaves its country of origin into a foreign account in a jurisdiction like Cyprus, Belize, the Seychelles or the British Virgin Islands. Often, shell companies registered in the U.K. or Cyprus are involved. After passing through multiple layers, the money would end up in Baltic countries such as Latvia, and from there enter the accounts of banks such as Danske or Swedbank.
