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NORDEA

Nordea CEO: I should have stayed in rented flat

Christian Clausen, CEO of Nordic banking giant Nordea, has responded to criticism of the bank's purchase of a 22.5 million kronor ($3.4 million) flat for him in Stockholm, saying that had they anticipated the outrage, they would have acted differently.

Nordea CEO: I should have stayed in rented flat

“We probably would have continued with a rental flat,” he said to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) daily and confessed to be “shaken” by the protest storm engulfing Nordea.

Sweden’s finance minister Anders Borg on Wednesday urged Nordea customers to change banks if the flat purchase had caused them to lose faith in the firm in which the Swedish state has an ownership stake.

“What has happened doesn’t increase confidence,” Borg said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Svenska Dagbladet reported last week that Nordea had purchased the 256-square-metre flat in central Stockholm at a time when the bank is set to make around 2,000 staff redundant.

The bank is furthermore planning to invest another 10 million kronor to renovate the flat, which is currently being used as office space.

The bank defended the purchase of the apartment, arguing it was a decision taken by the Nordea board of directors, something disputed by two union representatives who sit on the board.

According to union representative Steinar Nickelsen, who has been on the board since 2007, the question of purchasing a flat for Clausen was discussed, but not such a large and stately property as the one which was eventually purchased.

“It sends the wrong signals to spend so much money on an apartment when Nordea finds itself in its current situation with huge personnel reductions. We should have never made the purchase,” he told SvD.

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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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