The Securities and Exchange Commission closed its six-year investigation of Stockholm-based Swedbank, the bank announced Saturday.
The investigation, which ended without an enforcement action, concerned Swedbank’s “historic disclosures of information,” the bank said.
The investigation launched in 2019 after Swedish broadcaster SVT reported that billions of dollars in illicit funds were funneled through a Swedbank branch in Estonia between 2005 and 2015, Forbes reported at the time.
“With this announcement from the Securities and Exchange Commission, we are placing another investigation of historical shortcomings behind us,” Tomas Hedberg, head of special task force and deputy CEO of Swedbank, said in a prepared statement.
The money laundering investigation led to the firing of CEO Birgitte Bonnesen, who was sentenced to 15 months in prison last year for fraud over her handling of anti-money laundering protocols in Estonia, Reuters reported.
Swedish authorities fined the bank 4 billion kronor ($426 million) in 2020 for anti-money laundering breaches, according to Bloomberg. Two other investigations into alleged money laundering at Swedbank – by the U.S. Justice Department and the New York Department of Financial Services – are still ongoing.
Swedbank said it can’t assess the status or potential financial impact of the investigations.
The closure of the investigation is a positive development, but is not directly comparable to the remaining probes because the mandate at the SEC centers on disclosure, Citi analyst Shrey Srivastava wrote in a note to clients seen by Bloomberg.
The outstanding investigations “pertain to financially more severe matters,” Danske Bank analyst Mark Elving Naur wrote in a note to clients also seen by Bloomberg.
The SEC declined to comment. Neither the DOJ nor the NYDFS responded to requests for comment.