NEW YORK—Nordea Bank has agreed to pay a $35-million fine to end an investigation into the largest Nordic lender’s past anti-money laundering shortcomings.
The fine represents a final resolution into the probe by the New York State Department of Financial Services concerning the adequacy of Helsinki, Finland-based Nordea’s anti-money laundering safeguards in the 2008 to 2019 period, the lender said, according to the Mint report.
“The development is the latest sequel to one of Europe’s largest dirty-money scandals from the last decade that’s linked to suspect flows from the former Soviet Union to the West through Nordic banks, and has implicated several regional heavyweights including Danske Bank A/S and Swedbank AB. Danske in 2022 agreed to pay $2 billion to end a probe in the U.S.,” Mint said.
‘No Material Impact’
“The historical investigations by DFS concerned Nordea’s former processes, policies and controls to prevent money laundering and the former compliance framework, including those of the closed Vesterport International Branch in Denmark and Nordea’s former operations in the Baltics,” the bank said in a statement.
The fine “has no material impact on the financial position of Nordea,” and the charge will be booked in the third quarter, the bank added in its statement, according to Mint.
According to Nordea’s understanding, the resolution concludes DFS’s investigation, and the bank said it’s “not aware of any other pending or active investigation by U.S. authorities related to such historical financial crime prevention matters.”