Investment Banking

Danske Bank agrees to pay $2bn to settle Estonia money-laundering investigation

The bank said that under its plea agreement with the Justice Department it will be placed on probation for three years

Danske Bank, Denmark’s largest bank, has agreed to pay about $2bn to settle long-running probes into anti-money-laundering failures that led to hundreds of billions of dollars of suspicious transactions flowing largely unchecked through a former branch in Estonia.

The Copenhagen-based bank on Tuesday said it had reached coordinated settlements with the US Justice Department, US Securities and Exchange Commission and Denmark’s Special Crime Unit. The bank admitted to defrauding other banks regarding its Estonia customers and its anti-money-laundering controls.

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