In the “Weekly Round-Up” we summarise and give extra reading suggestions for some of the past weeks financial crime news headlines, powered by Acuminor’s crime universe ThreatView® .
Welcome, 2022! After some well-deserved downtime during the season holidays, we are up and running at full speed again. Some interesting stories have passed during the holidays and at the start of the year worth diving into over the weekend.
To start, let us revisit events connected to the laundry scandal that involved several Nordic banks with branch offices in the Baltics. It was reported that a Danish woman has now been charged for laundering $4.55 billion through Danske banks Estonia branch.
Yahoo Finance – Danish woman charged over laundering of $4.5 billion in Danske Bank scandal
Another bank that also ended up in the spotlight during the investigations into money laundering occurring through Baltic branch offices was Swedbank. The CEO had to step down from her position and has been charged with fraud, market manipulation and the unauthorised disclosure of inside information.
The Guardian – Swedbank ex-chief charged over money laundering scandal
Staying in the Baltics, Estonia will introduce new regulations on virtual assets providers. The change to the existing legislation is a move to address key risks that the Estonian authorities have identified. The Ministry of Finance has a great FAQ page for more information on the upcoming changes.
Lastly, a bit more on Crypto. The Blockchain analytic company Chainalysis releases a report called Crypto Crime each year. Before the complete report come out, they release a few previews. Here is the latest preview with Crypto Crime Trends for 2022:
