An internal report issued by Luminor Bank in 2019 points to serious shortcomings in the anti-money laundering practices of Nordea and DNB’s Baltic unit in Norway.
Luminor Bank was founded by Nordea and DNB in โโ2017.
Yle’s investigation unit MOT found that billions of dubious euros were flowing through the Baltic offices of the two financial groups. Some of the funds appear to be related to money laundering, according to the MOT document leak With the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and four Baltic news channels.
The transfers alone do not prove that the criminals used Nordea and the Norwegian DNB to launder money – that is, to legalize misappropriated profits. However, the leak suggests that banks have failed to identify and combat money laundering.
For example, the documents show that the Russian man sought by Interpol was the real owner of the Estonian group of companies using Nordea.
According to the 2019 internal Luminor report, at least EUR 3.9 billion of suspicious sources flowed through Nordea and DNB. Nordea previously claimed that its Baltic offices were not subject to money laundering suspicions.
The suspicious transfers relate to Nordea’s Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian branches. Luminor Bank, established by Nordea and DNB in โโ2017, has also been implicated in suspected money laundering. Nordea has since sold most of its stake in the bank.
The report also revealed an unusually close connection between Nordea’s public relations manager and a man who previously headed the Danske Banks International Banking division. This chamber is currently the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation into $ 241 billion in suspicious transactions.
Nordea told MOT that it was doing everything it could to prevent money laundering. The bank declined to comment on the suspicious transfers, stating that the law prevents it from discussing individual customers publicly.
"We do everything we can to fight financial crime and prevent criminals from using Nordea for money laundering. This was also the case in our previous operations in the Baltic market," Nordea Finland Anu Torkkeli wrote in a press release.