Swedbank will continue to work with Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority (SFSA) and improve AML processes as a sanction is imposed on the bank.
The regulator has chosen to launch a sanction case against the Swedish bank as part of its ongoing investigation process.
Earlier in the year, Swedbank was hit with money laundering allegations linking it with suspicious transactions in its Estonian offices.
The SFSA is investigating the bank’s governance and control of measures to tackle money laundering in the Baltic region. This is being conducted in cooperation with Estonia’s financial authority Finantsinspektsioon, which is also opening a sanctioning case on the Swedbank.
Financial authorities in Latvia and Lithuania are also aiding in the investigation. All the regulators are coordinating activities and sharing their findings.
The Swedish regulator believes there are “sufficient grounds” for assessing whether the deficiencies and weaknesses found during the investigation should lead to a sanction or if its investigation should end in a different manner. It went on to state that it will continue to analyse the situation until the next step of the sanction process.
In response to the sanctions from the SFSA, Swedbank released a comment which said, “In the Bank’s reply to the Financial Supervisory Authority’s verification letter on September 16, 2019, it was noted that many of the key observations made by the Financial Supervisory Authority correspond to the bank’s own observations. The Financial Supervisory Authority in Sweden will now try whether the matter is subject to sanctions or not. Swedbank continues to cooperate with and provide all information that the authorities ask for.
“The work to strengthen functions to prevent money laundering and improve customer knowledge (KYC) continues throughout the bank. New competence and resources are put in place and general employee knowledge about anti-money laundering is improved.”
Finantsinspektsioon is investigating the compliance of Swedbank’s Estonian subsidiary
The results of the SFSA’s investigation will be released at the start of 2020.
Swedbank recently released its quarterly reports which flagged a dramatic drop in earnings following the money laundering scandal. The scandal has also seen its chairman and CEO leave the bank.
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