SEB Says Suspect Customers in Swedish TV Show Were Already Known and Dealt With
November 19 2019 - 3:34AM
Dow Jones News
By Dominic Chopping
STOCKHOLM--Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB-A.SK) said
Tuesday that a list of suspect customers passed onto the bank by a
Swedish investigative television program were mostly already known
to the bank.
The Swedish lender was last week contacted by Swedish TV show
Uppdrag Granskning, claiming it had information on the bank ahead
of a program it will air on suspected money laundering in the
Baltics.
SEB has now received that information, that included a list of
194 corporate names.
"The names on the list from Sveriges Television have previously
been handled and approximately 95% of the customer relations are
terminated," SEB said in a statement Tuesday.
"When SEB has detected suspected activities it has been reported
to relevant finance police."
A few of the clients on the list still have a relationship with
the bank as SEB considers that they meet the bank's criteria, and
with the information that SEB has about the customers today, there
has been no reason to terminate the relationship, it said.
However, the bank acknowledged that before 2008 neither
regulations nor the banking system's ability were sufficiently
efficient to handle risks of money laundering. It said that since
then, its ability to prevent, detect and report suspected financial
crime has increased while regulations have been tightened.
"SEB is doing its utmost to prevent that the bank is used for
financial crime. Nevertheless, SEB cannot guarantee that it has not
been used nor that SEB will be used," the lender said.
SEB had previously avoided being dragged into the
money-laundering scandal that has seen Denmark's Danske Bank AS
(DANSKE.KO) and Sweden's Swedbank AB (SWED-A.SK) embroiled in
investigations.
It was the Swedish news show Uppdrag Granskning that first
reported in February that billions of dollars of illicit funds may
have passed through Swedbank's Estonian branch.
Denmark's Danske Bank AS (DANSKE.KO) is also being investigated
over allegations that around $230 billion in suspicious funds from
Russia and other former Soviet states entered Europe through its
branch in Estonia.
Uppdrag Granskning also recently interviewed Swedbank AB
(SWED-A.SK) Chief Executive Jens Henriksson as a follow-up to
previously aired programs about suspected money-laundering.
The Uppdrag Granskning show is expected to air on Nov. 20.
Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 19, 2019 03:19 ET (08:19 GMT)
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