Nordic Banks Finally Emerge From a Money Laundering Scandal
After nearly a decade of probes and billions of dollars in costs and fines, the region’s lenders are shaking off their Baltic scandal and finding room to grow.
Swedbank AB logo outside the bank's headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.
Photographer: Mikael Sjoberg/BloombergIn December 2018, Bill Browder, the chief executive officer of Hermitage Capital LLP, received an unexpected visitor at his London office: the then-CEO of Swedbank AB, Birgitte Bonnesen.
Browder is a well-known campaigner against corruption and human rights abuses in Russia, spurred on by the death of Hermitage’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in Russian police custody in 2009. At the time of his arrest, Magnitsky had been investigating a $230 million tax fraud. “We made it our life’s work to figure out who benefited from the crime that led to his murder,” Browder said.