{"id":5928,"date":"2024-10-07T17:56:35","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T17:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/former-swedbank-chief-faces-prison-over-money-laundering-scandal\/"},"modified":"2024-10-07T17:56:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T17:56:35","slug":"former-swedbank-chief-faces-prison-over-money-laundering-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=5928","title":{"rendered":"Former Swedbank chief faces prison over money-laundering scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Swedbank chief executive Birgitte Bonnesen is facing 15 months in prison after a Swedish appeals court convicted her of spreading misleading information about the bank\u2019s money laundering problems in Estonia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bonnesen, who led Sweden\u2019s oldest bank from 2016 until she was fired by its board in 2019, was convicted of \u201cgross swindling\u201d by the Svea Court of Appeal, making her the highest-ranking Swedish banker to go to jail over the scandal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had previously been in charge of the bank\u2019s Baltic business.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe court has assessed several statements that the CEO has made to the press and equity analysts,\u201d the court said in a statement on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe court has con\u00adcluded that two of the statements have been incorrect or mis\u00adrepre\u00adsented facts in a way that they have been misleading in the sense of the Swedish Criminal Code.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonnesen intended to appeal against the verdict, her lawyer, Per Samuelsson, told TT, a Swedish news agency. She was acquitted of other charges brought against her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The conviction relates to one of Europe\u2019s biggest money-laundering scandals. Both Swedbank and Denmark\u2019s Danske Bank were alleged to have been part of a system that allowed Russian oligarchs and criminals to move money through their Baltic branches and into the western financial system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Swedish court said on Tuesday that Bonnesen \u201cdisseminated misleading statements\u201d in newspaper and television interviews in relation to the bank\u2019s third-quarter results in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state\u00adments conveyed the misleading message that there did not exist any suspicious money laundering links to the operations in Estonia of another bank,\u201d the court said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe misleading infor\u00admation was liable to influence the assessment of the Swedish bank from a financial point of view, and thereby cause a loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweden\u2019s economic crime authority charged Bonnesen with fraud and market manipulation in January 2022.<\/p>\n

Swedbank commissioned a report into the matter by law firm Clifford Chance, which found that the bank had carried out \u20ac37bn of transactions with a high risk for money laundering between 2014 and 2019.<\/p>\n

An internal Swedbank report, seen by public broadcaster SVT, found about \u20ac80bn of money flowed through the non-resident client business of the bank in the Baltics from 2008 until 2013, most of it from Russia and other ex-Soviet states.<\/p>\n

Swedbank cancelled Bonnesen\u2019s severance pay in March 2020 following the publication of the Clifford Chance report. The document judged that statements Bonnesen made in late 2018 and early 2019, as the scandal was developing, were \u201cinaccurate or presented without sufficient context\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, the bank decided not to pursue any legal case of its own against Bonnesen or her predecessor Michael Wolf, who was in charge from 2009 until 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Former Swedbank chief executive Birgitte Bonnesen is facing 15 months in prison after a Swedish appeals court convicted her of spreading misleading information about the bank\u2019s money laundering problems in Estonia.\u00a0 Bonnesen, who led Sweden\u2019s oldest bank from 2016 until she was fired by its board in 2019, was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[604,605,606,386,607,603],"class_list":{"0":"post-5928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-financial-crime","8":"tag-chief","9":"tag-faces","10":"tag-moneylaundering","11":"tag-prison","12":"tag-scandal","13":"tag-swedbank"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}