A former chief executive of Swedbank was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 months in prison by a Swedish appellate court for deceiving investors about the bank’s links to a money laundering scandal that erupted in the Baltic States and particularly in Estonia, the APF news agency has reported.
Birgitte Bonnesen was the former executive who was found guilt of “gross swindling.”
Her lawyer, Per Samuelson, expressed “shock” over the verdict to the Swedish news agency TT and vowed to appeal it.
The Svea Court of Appeal overturned a district court ruling from 2023 in which Bonnesen was acquitted. This was five years after the eruption of a money laundering scandal in which Swedbank was implicated.
Bonnesen was CEO of Swedbank Group when the scandal broke out. She has denied all charges, and, as noted, she was acquitted by the Stockholm District Court in 2023. A key component of the indictment involved Swedbank Estonia and the provision of incorrect information about anti-money laundering steps which the bank was taking, according to the Estonian daily Postimees.
Prosecutors at the appellate level demanded a two-year prison sentence for Bonnesen.
In 2019, the Swedish public broadcaster SVT alleged that at least 40 billion kronor (equal at the time to USD 4.4 billion) involving suspicious or high-risk transactions had been channelled to the Baltic countries, and particularly to Estonia, via Swedbank accounts.
The revelations caused the bank’s share price tumble, and Bonnesen was fired.
The next year, Sweden’s financial regulator levied a fine of SEK 4 billion against the bank and warned it to do better at observing laws against money laundering.
Prosecutors later charged Bonnesen of providing false or misleading information “intentionally or with aggravated negligence” about steps which the bank had taken to prevent and detect suspected money laundering.”
“This court concludes that the former CEO disseminated misleading statements in interviews with the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and the Swedish news agency TT with respect to the bank’s release of its third quarterly report for 2018,” the court declared in a statement.
“The statements conveyed the misleading message to suggest that there were no suspicious money laundering links to the operations of another bank in Estonia,” the court added.
The court found that Bonnesen’s comments were “liable to influence the assessment of the Swedish bank from a financial point of view, thus causing losses.”
Prosecutors also charged Bonnesen with insider trading by informing the bank’s main owners that an investigative documentary was being produced.
The appellate court, however, found that the information which was shared with the owners was not of “sufficiently specific nature to be considered insider information,” as was declared in the ruling. It, like the district court before it, acquitted Bonnesen of this charge.
Bonnesen worked as CEO of Swedbank from 2016 until 2019.
Source: BNS
(Reproduction of BNS information in mass media and other websites without written consent of BNS is prohibited.)