Swedbank fined $50 million by New York authorities over Panama Papers revelations

Swedbank has agreed to pay a $50 million fine to New York’s state financial regulator to settle a money laundering case tied to the Panama Papers.

The Swedish group reached the settlement with the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), which first launched the investigation in 2019.

The probe was into the bank’s anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing controls, and its disclosures to regulators between 2007 and 2019, according to a statement by Swedbank.

The DFS had accused Swedbank of withholding information and misleading investigators during the probe into its ties with the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

The Panama Papers, a 2016 cross-border journalistic expose led by ICIJ and Suddeutsche Zeitung, was based on a huge trove of leaked Mossack Fonseca documents. Among those documents was proof that customers of Swedbank’s Estonia subsidiary used Mossack Fonseca as a registered agent.

Three years later, journalists from ICIJ’s Swedish partner SVT revealed that Swedbank may have withheld information from U.S. authorities over suspicious financial transactions, contrary to what the bank had claimed.

Following the 2016 publication  of the Panama Papers, DFS made two information requests to Swedbank asking about its relationship with Mossack Fonseca, related banks, institutions and individuals, the recent statement said. Authorities found that the bank failed to report on such relationships, failed to acknowledge the existence of European regulatory inquiries and withheld information relating to its subsidiaries in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

“Critically, the leak shed light on the failure of global financial institutions to follow legal requirements designed to ensure that their customers are not engaged in or facilitating fraud, money laundering, or other criminal acts,” the consent order reads.