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The Seimas Budget and Finance and National Security and Defense Committees will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday. The title of the meeting agenda is publicly announced: “Investigations by US banks on commercial banks operating in Lithuania”.
According to Mykolas Majauskas, Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee, representatives of the Bank of Lithuania, the Attorney General’s Office, the Department of State Security and the Financial Crimes Investigation Service will attend the committee meeting.
“The meeting will discuss the US investigation into the activities of Scandinavian banking units in the Baltic States. We must take all necessary measures to ensure the safety and reliability of the Lithuanian financial system,” M. Majauskas told BNS.
Laurynas Kasčiūnas, chairman of the Seimas Committee for Defense and National Security, said the parliamentarians will consult with representatives of the main police and control institutions on cooperation.
“Clear institutional responsibilities and action algorithms will help to ensure effective money laundering prevention,” he told BNS.
Inquiries from the US
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.
The SNB has not yet been able to obtain a comment from the Attorney General’s Office.
Banks: nothing new
Scandinavian banks say media coverage of the US investigation is not new, but they say they cannot detail which services are conducting the investigation.
“We know that Danske Bank is being investigated by the Danish, American, Estonian and French authorities and, as we have said many times before, we are in close dialogue with all of them. However, we cannot yet assess the outcome of these dialogues and how long it may take, ”said Danske Bank spokesman Stefan Singh Kailay.
“The Group has reported in previously published financial results reports and this is not new information. Swedbank cooperates with the US authorities and provides all the necessary information for the investigations, but for legal reasons we cannot reveal which authorities carry out these investigations, ”Saulius Abraškevičius, a representative of Swedbank, told BNS.
SEB says it has previously announced inquiries from US authorities regarding information on anti-money laundering measures.
“As foreign authorities prohibit disclosure and sharing of information is regulated, we have chosen not to mention individual authorities, but we always work transparently with all authorities who ask us questions,” said SEB spokesman Frank Hohem , in a comment sent to BNS.
“Given the recent investigations in Sweden and the Baltics into SEB’s anti-money laundering measures, it is natural for other supervisors to ask us questions. However, we have not been informed of any accusations against SEB and, to our best knowledge and belief, there is no investigation into the imposition of sanctions against the SEB Group, ”he said.
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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