This week Wednesday, 21 November, the European Parliament’s Committee on Financial Crimes, Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance (TAX3) will hold a hearing on the fight against money laundering in the European banking sector. Howard Wilkinson, former board member of Danske Bank and Whistleblower, will attend the hearing. Jesper Nielsen, Interim CEO of Danske Bank and Diederik van Wassenaer, Global Head of Regulatory and International Affairs at ING Bank NV, as well as representatives of the European Commission and the European Banking Authority (EBA) will answer questions.
In March 2017 the Danish Danske Bank drew attention to itself when it became known that its Estonian subsidiary may have been used to wash a „large“ part of around 200 billion euros that non-resident customers had channeled through the bank’s subsidiary between 2007 and 2015. At the insistence of the Greens/EFA and the EU Commission, the European Banking Authority (EBA) is currently examining whether the national supervisory authorities of Danske Bank in Denmark and Estonia have sufficiently fulfilled their obligation to prevent money laundering and have imposed timely sanctions. The hearing in the Tax3 Committee will look into the cases of Danske Bank in Denmark and Estonia and ING in the Netherlands. The hearing will also show how money laundering scandals in the European banking sector can be combated more effectively.
During the hearing we only have a few minutes to ask questions. I am therefore looking forward to receiving concrete hints for possible questions from the Commission representatives and representatives of the banking sector, as well as from Whistleblower Howard Wilkinson: sven.giegold@ep.europa.eu
The hearing can be followed live on the internet from 9.15 a.m. onwards. The streaming will be available here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/de/committees/video?event=20181121-0915-COMMITTEE-TAX3
The programme and background information on the hearing can be found here:
https://sven-giegold.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/TAX3-Hearing-Banks-21-November-2018.pdf