Sven Giegold

SF in the Danish Parliament and Greens in the European Parliament: Danske Bank and the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority must explain itself in front of new European Parliament’s tax committee

The growing money laundering scandal in Danske Bank will be investigated by a special committee in the European Parliament. On Wednesday, the Parliament will appoint the members of the committee and according to Sven Giegold, the Green negotiator for the committee’s mandate, the scandal in Denmark’s largest lender will be at the top of the agenda. Danske Bank as well as the Danish Financial Supervisory authority will be asked to explain itself to the European Parliament.

 

We will put the recent money laundering scandals in Denmark, Estonia and Latvia at the top of the agenda. Danske Bank, the Latvian ABLV and the national anti-money laundering authorities have to explain to Parliament their recent failure to prevent money laundering. The European Commission, the ECB and the European Banking Authority must explain what they will do to prevent such scandals from happening again, says MEP Sven Giegold.

 

In Denmark MP and spokesperson on financial and fiscal affairs from the Socialist People’s party, Lisbeth Bech Poulsen will call the minister for justice and the minister for industry and business to a parliamentary consultation after it has been revealed that the Danish Financial Supervisory authority is now investigating the money laundering allegations. The chairman of the Danish Financial Supervisory authority was a member of the management in Danske Bank at the time when the alleged money laundering took place in the Bank’s Estonian branch – a constellation that could severely damage the credibility and partiality of the Danish financial regulator and thereby compromise confidence in the supervision of banks in Denmark.

 

Lisbeth Bech Poulsen says that the Danish people, the customers, the shareholders and the Danish Parliament have been fooled by the management of Danske Bank. Their explanations keep changing, in the beginning we heard that it was only Latvia, now it’s all over the Baltic.

“The CEO has ensured us that he was not aware of anybody in the management being aware of the money laundering, but according to the daily Berlingske, the senior management were in the know from the beginning. Danske Bank is not only the country’s biggest bank, it is also the bank that were rescued by Danish taxpayers’ money during the financial crises, which were about to destabilize the Danish economy. Also the extent of the alleged money laundering is enormous and the allegations that a relative of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia’s intelligence services were behind the money laundering must be investigated thoroughly, Lisbeth Bech Poulsen says.

 

“The Danish ministers keep saying all the right things, but they don’t act. The fact that our minister for industry and business will not let an impartial investigation take place is a scandal of an unimaginable scale, Lisbeth Bech Poulsen says.

 

The Greens in the European Parliament have sent a series of written questions to the European Central Bank, the Single Resolution Mechanism, the European Banking Authority and the European Commission to shed light on the operational and legislative problems encountered during the recent crisis:

https://sven-giegold.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/2018-03-13-WQs-Latvia-compressed.pdf

 

Contact:

Sven Giegold, MEP Office Brussels: +32 228 45369

Lisbeth Bech Poulsen, MP and spokesperson on fiscal affairs, The Socialist People’s party in Denmark: + 45 6162 5086

Rubrik: Wirtschaft & Währung

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