The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has officially closed its 6-year investigation into Swedbank’s anti-money laundering (AML) efforts without imposing an enforcement action, Bloomberg reported.
“We are placing another investigation of historical shortcomings behind us,” said Tomas Hedberg, Swedbank’s deputy CEO, in a statement Saturday, describing the SEC decision as a significant step toward resolving the bank’s legacy compliance issues.
The SEC inquiry, which began in 2019, focused on Swedbank’s Baltic branches and their historical failures in anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing (CTF), and transparency obligations. The Stockholm-based lender has faced years of regulatory scrutiny following revelations that billions of dollars in suspicious transactions may have flowed through its Estonian operations.
Swedbank remains under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the New York Department of Financial Services, Bloomberg reported. The bank said it cannot yet estimate the potential financial impact or timeline for resolution of those cases.
Swedbank, Sweden’s second-largest bank by market value, has already paid 4 billion kronor ($426 million) in fines to Swedish regulators in 2020 for AML breaches. But U.S. penalties could be significantly steeper. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Philip Richards noted earlier this year that potential fines may range from $386 million—roughly in line with the Swedish fine—to as much as $1 billion, depending on how the remaining cases are structured.
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