Bloomberg; Swedbank CEO Birgitte Bonnesen - $230 billion in Russian-linked money
Swedbank CEO Birgitte Bonnesen was acquitted of financial crime charges connected to one of Europe’s largest money-laundering scandals. While clearly good news for Bonnesen, who had her 15-month prison sentence overturned, the acquittal doesn’t quite draw a line under an affair that has tainted the Nordic banking industry for much of the past decade. International investigators have found that compliance failures enabled criminals to move roughly $230 billion in Russian-linked money illicitly through Nordic banks’ Baltic branches. Swedbank’s involvement in the scandal is still under investigation by the New York Department of Financial Services. In 2020, the Stockholm-based bank was fined a record 4 billion kronor ($431 million) by Sweden’s top financial watchdog. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-04-24/banks-turn-page-on-major-dirty-money-scandal-nordic-edition 21 april. Birgitte Bonnesen frias av Högsta domstolen. https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/04/21-...