Swedbank Estonia Reports High-Risk Client for Laundering $2 Billion

Swedbank Estonia labeled one of its clients a “high-risk” company due to suspicious transactions and reported other companies linked to the mining group to US regulators.

The bank dropped Solway as a client as it identified suspicious transactions related to the mining group using shell companies. According to reporters, hundreds of transactions worth over $1.9 billion in leaked banking data between 23 companies that were linked to Solway.

Many of these companies were reported to US regulators for millions of dollars worth of suspicious transactions. Other companies that were reported were involved in Russian tax evasion and money laundering scandals.

In early 2019, Swedbank executives were showing concerns regarding their branch in Estonia being used as a source to launder billions of dollars. A memo was then circulated to the employees of the bank, highlighting the measures that were taken to deal with “high-risk” customers in the previous years. These measures included closing down the accounts of hundreds of customers.

Solway Investment Group, a metals company that operates mines and smelting facilities in various countries around the world, was one of the companies that had its account closed. 

Most of the companies in the Solway group were identified as “holding/transaction entities,” some of which had carried out “questionable transactions,” said the memo, obtained by Eesti Ekspress. It noted Solway had “declined the request to present correct ownership documentation” and so was “offboarded in 2011.”

When large sums of money were being laundered through its Baltic operations, Swedbank shut down the account of Solway and it was no longer a customer. Later on, investigators found that approximately 200 billion euros were laundered using the accounts in Estonian branches of Swedbank and Danske Bank in Denmark between the years 2007 and 2015.

Most of the laundered money came from Russia and Eastern Europe to shell companies and resulted in one of the largest-ever money laundering scandals.

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