December 2 2019
The TT news agency and the broadcaster SVT reported that debts worth EUR 45 million had been settled via SEB’s Baltic accounts. They were caused by companies with links to suspicious flows from Russia. According to this report, 25 SEB customers had transactions with 18 companies associated with the “Magnizki Affair”. This name goes back to the Russian auditor Sergei Magnizki, who in 2008 made public the alleged tax fraud of Russian civil servants and then arrested himself on suspicion of tax evasion. He died in Russian imprisonment ten years ago.
SEB is far from being the first Scandinavian bank involved in the money laundering scandal. The starting point of the investigations are stores of the Danish Danske Bank in Estonia. Danske, to which the previous Chief Financial Officer of the Commerzbank Stephan Engels will move in the coming year, is being investigated in several countries.
