Sweden’s Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) has launched an investigation into whether Swedbank is complying with the country’s anti-money-laundering (AML) rules on customer due diligence, Reuters reported Friday.
The new supervisory probe will focus on the bank’s compliance efforts from December 2023 to November 2025, the FSA said in a statement cited by the news agency. It remains unclear whether the authority’s concerns stem from routine checks or suspicions of wrongdoing, according to the report.
The investigation marks a setback for Swedbank, which had faced years of regulatory scrutiny and legal troubles following the revelation that it was among a group of Nordic lenders linked to a massive money-laundering network operated by organized-crime groups from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
Swedbank, which was tied to more than $10 billion in questionable transactions, was implicated in the scheme from 2019 on and was fined approximately $435 million by Swedish authorities in 2020. The bank’s former CEO, Birgitte Bonneson, was found guilty by a Swedish court in 2024 of disseminating misleading statements to the media in connection with the scandal.
But by late last year, Swedbank’s regulatory troubles seemed to be winding down.
In September, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission officially closed a 6-year investigation into Swedbank’s AML efforts without levying an enforcement penalty. In January, Swedbank said that the U.S. Justice Department had similarly ended its yearslong investigation into its AML compliance program without bringing charges or imposing a settlement on the institution.
An investigation by the New York State Department of Financial Services was still ongoing, Swedbank noted at the time.
On Friday, the FSA offered little insight into what the latest investigation means for the Swedish lender.
“How banks and financial companies counter risks of money laundering and terrorist financing in their operations is a priority issue in the FSA’s supervision in 2026,” the agency told Reuters.
Read more at Reuters