Denmark’s financial regulator has reported a local unit of Nordea Bank to police over suspected breaches of anti-money-laundering rules and asked authorities to open a criminal investigation, the authority disclosed Monday. 

The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority said an inspection conducted in June 2023 found that Nordea Finans Danmark A/S lacked sufficient knowledge of a large portion of its customer base, and for a larger percentage of its client base who had been received credit cards, the financial institution had not assessed why the cards had been requested or what they were intended for. The agency described the shortcomings as a systematic deficiency.

The FSA also found that the firm failed to carry out proper risk assessments, including risk classification, for a large group of customers, meaning it did not evaluate whether specific money-laundering or terrorist-financing risks were tied to those relationships.

The FSA concluded that Nordea Finans did not comply with customer due diligence requirements under Denmark’s Anti-Money Laundering Act and said the violations could give rise to criminal liability. The regulator has asked the National Unit for Serious Crime to open a further investigation.

Nordea pushed back on the regulator’s findings. In a statement cited by Bloomberg, the bank said it “fundamentally disagrees” with the FSA’s assessment and called the filing of a police report “out of proportion.” Nordea said its Finans unit had adequate knowledge of, and had risk-assessed, customers who were ordinary Danish people and well-established businesses.

The referral adds to the bank’s mounting legal troubles in Denmark, Bloomberg noted. Danish police in 2024 indicted Nordea in what the country’s National Special Crime Unit described as the largest money-laundering case in Danish history. That case remains ongoing.

The indictment followed a wave of money-laundering disclosures that have shaken the Nordic banking industry since 2018, when Danske Bank A/S acknowledged that non-resident flows through its Estonian unit were suspicious, according to Bloomberg.