The U.S. Department of Justice has closed its anti-money laundering (AML) investigation into Swedbank AG without bringing an enforcement action, according to the Swiss lender. 

In a statement published Wednesday, Swedbank said that, while the federal case has officially closed, the investigation of the institution by the New York Department of Financial Services remains ongoing. 

“With this information we are placing another investigation of historical shortcomings behind us,” said Tomas Hedberg, Head of Special Task Force and Deputy CEO of Swedbank, in the statement. 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in September concluded its own investigation into the bank without taking further action. The SEC probe, launched in 2019, focused on Swedbank’s past failures related to its AML and counterterrorism financing controls, as well as how the bank disclosed information connected to its Baltic branches, Bloomberg reported.

Swedbank was among a group of Nordic lenders tied to a $230-billion money-laundering scheme spanning from 2007 to 2015. At the center of the scandal were accusations that banks had processed billions of dollars in suspicious funds believed to be tied to organized crime in Russia and other former Soviet states. 

Swedbank, Sweden’s second-largest bank by market value, was fined 4bn Swedish kronor (about $435 million) by Swedish authorities in 2020 for breaches of AML rules, Bloomberg reported.

Former Swedbank CEO Birgitte Bonnesen was found guilty by a Swedish court in 2024 of disseminating misleading statements to the media in connection with the scandal. 

Read more at Bloomberg