By paying a total of two billion dollars (1.9 billion euros), the investigations against Danske Bank are dropped. According to the US Department of Justice, $850 million of the total will be used to complete investigations by other agencies in the United States and abroad.
The scandal became public in 2018. It is about 200 billion euros that are said to have been laundered by Danske Bank Estonia between 2007 and 2015. Investigators assume that the money came mainly from Russia and former Soviet republics.
Danske Bank announced in October that it had set aside almost two billion euros to be able to pay the fines. The investigations and associated discussions with the Danish and US authorities in the matter have progressed so far that the financial consequences for the bank are foreseeable, said company boss Carsten Egeriis.
Other banks have also had to pay high fines because of the scandal. In October 2020, the public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt am Main imposed a fine of 13.5 million euros on Deutsche Bank for belated reports of money laundering at its ex-partner institute Danske Bank. Deutsche Bank accepted the fine at the time.
