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The prosecution representative Elena Martinonienė informed BNS about this shortly after MPs held a meeting of the two committees in response to media reports on the US investigation into the activities of Scandinavian bank branches in the Baltic states.
According to her, at present the Attorney General’s Office has not received any requests for international legal assistance from the US authorities in connection with investigations of alleged financial crimes at the specified banks operating in Lithuania or their branches.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office also has no other data on the fact that the crimes mentioned in the investigation were carried out in the specified banks, so no pre-trial investigations are being carried out in Lithuania,” E. Martinonien told BNS.
“In light of the information released today in the media, the Attorney General’s Office has asked the United States and other foreign communication agencies to provide information on such investigations, if possible, if possible,” he said.
Laurynas Kasčiūnas, chairman of the Seimas Defense and National Security Committee, told BNS after a closed-door session on Wednesday that the United States “is investigating banks that operate in other Baltic countries” and that “Lithuania is not listed there.”
His committee heard information on law enforcement, intelligence and the central bank in a closed joint meeting with the Budget and Finance Committee.
Swedish business newspaper Dagens Industri reported in December that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating Scandinavian banks SEB, Swedbank and Danske Bank for alleged infringements of their Baltic branches.
In a published article, sources at Dagens Industri said that US authorities suspect the branches of the three banks in the Baltic countries of fraud and money laundering. It was reported that last summer, the Swedish Ministry of Justice received a request for legal assistance from colleagues in the United States, which revealed that the activities of these banks are being investigated by three US federal authorities. As a result of this article, bank stock prices fell.
Karolina Frolovienė, representative of the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice, informed BNS that the Ministry had not received such a request.
The Bank of Lithuania says it has no data on US investigations into banks operating in Lithuania.
“The Bank of Lithuania has not received any official information, including requests for cooperation, on the US investigations. We have general information from publicly available sources, which does not mention banks operating in Lithuania,” said Giedrius Šniukas, spokesman for the central bank.
Scandinavian banks say media coverage of the US investigation is not new, but they say they cannot detail which services are conducting the investigation.
The biggest money laundering scandal came in 2018, when Danish bank Danske admitted that some € 200 million had been transferred through its Estonian branch. funds of suspicious origin from Russia and other countries.
Later, the shadow of suspicion came to Sweden and banks Swedbank and SEB were fined for loopholes in the prevention of money laundering.
Representatives of the Lithuanian authorities have always tried to emphasize that the situation in Lithuania regarding the risk of money laundering is better than in other Baltic countries.
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