The Estonian branch of Danske Bank has been ordered to close up by Estonian authorities after being caught having laundered 200 BILLION USD worth of money from Russia and other former Soviet countries. A large portion of the money has been funneled through the Estonian branch and branches in other countries are under investigation, too. I don't think it's likely that the Finnish branch has been part of this and a candidate for being forced to close operations but if that is the case, I guess we're going to have refinance our mortgage. LOL
A little over a year ago, my wife and I were sitting at the table in a conference room at our local branch of Danske Bank with the sellers of our current house about to sign the deed and pay them the money. Some paperwork was taking a little while and all four of us and the loan officer were at the table chatting to pass the time. At one point, we talked about the role of cash in society and how anti-money laundering rules had made using cash for large purchases next to impossible. The loan officer recounted how one customer come over to the bank to buy a property with a briefcase full of cash in the 1990's. She said that would be impossible nowadays as tens or hundreds of thousands of euros of cash used to purchase a property would be a huge red flag under current AML rules. I quipped that laundering a tens of thousands of euros wouldn't a problem at all even under the present rules as it would only take a little time. We all had a hearty laugh about it and soon went on to sign the papers and get the deal done.
Little did I know at the time that in a little over thirteen months I would be reading in the press that roughly an annual Finnish GDP's worth of money had been laundered by some of that very respectable Nordic bank's branches and that its operations would be terminated by the authorities in at least one country in the region...
