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NORDEA

Trial starts for Sweden’s largest insider scandal

District court proceedings kicked off in Stockholm on Monday for what has been called the largest insider trading scandal in Swedish history.

Trial starts for Sweden's largest insider scandal

Five men stand accused of serious insider trading crimes. The prime suspects are two men referred to in the Swedish press as the Cevian-man, age 36, and the Nordea-man, age 37.

One additional suspect stands accused of being an accessory to serious insider trading crimes.

The accusations are grounded in a number of securities deals made with around 20 companies. According to the prosecution, the deals were conducted on the basis of insider information, generating an estimated profit of 130 million kronor ($18.4 million).

The Cevian-man and the Nordea-man are also charged with serious tax crimes which, like insider trading crimes, carry a possible penalty of several years jail time.

On his passage into the courthouse, the Cevian-man stopped to respond to questions from the media,

“I am here to prove that I haven’t earned a penny from insider information and I intend to show that,” he told the TT news agency.

When asked how he intended to prove his innocence, the man responded,

“You will have to see during the trial.”

The 36 year-old also denied claims from the prosecution that the accused discussed their illegal affairs in coded language, making reference to a form of terminology used throughout the financial industry in which every project is given a special name.

District court proceedings are expected to continue into February of next year.

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NORDEA

Nordea’s Danish offices raided in money laundering probe

The Nordic region's largest bank Nordea said Monday that Danish prosecutors had raided its offices in Denmark as part of an investigation into money laundering.

Nordea's Danish offices raided in money laundering probe
File photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix

The Danish State Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime seized physical and digital material — including emails — from the Copenhagen offices on June 12th, reported the Danish business newspaper Børsen, which first broke the story.

The bank confirmed the raid in a statement to AFP, saying it was carried out in relation to a probe into “compliance with anti-money laundering procedures” at its international branch, which was responsible for non-Nordic customers.

“We are fully cooperating with the prosecution service to ensure that they have access to all relevant information,” said Nordea's Danish head Frank Vang-Jensen.

The bank said that in 2014, when it was refocusing its activities on Nordic countries — and away from Baltic states — it evaluated its customers at the international branch and “exited the customers who didn't meet our criteria”.

The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority then lodged a money-laundering complaint against Nordea in 2016.

In October last year, Sweden's financial crime unit also received a complaint against Nordea, which moved its Swedish headquarters to Finland later that month for tax reasons.

Nordea has set aside 95 million euros to cover potential first-quarter costs related to the money laundering probes.

The investigation comes as Denmark's largest lender Danske Bank is the target of criminal probes in several countries over some 200 billion euros in transfers that passed through its Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015, involving some 15,000 foreign clients.

READ ALSO: Nordea reported to Denmark investigators over money laundering

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