On Tuesday, a Swedish court sentenced Swedbank’s former CEO to 15 months in prison for misrepresenting investors about the bank’s involvement in a money laundering scam.
Birgitte Bonnesen was convicted of “gross swindling”.
Her lawyer, Per Samuelsson, told Swedish news agency TT that he was “shocked” by the conviction and will submit an appeal.
The Svea Court of Appeal overruled a district court verdict from 2023 that acquitted Bonnesen, five years after a money laundering fraud involving Swedbank broke out.
In 2019, Swedish public television SVT claimed that at least 40 billion kronor (approximately to $4.4 billion at the time) in questionable and high-risk transactions were channeled from Swedbank accounts to Baltic countries, most notably Estonia.
The discoveries, which caused the bank’s stock price to plummet, led to Bonnesen’s dismissal.
The following year, Sweden’s financial authority penalized the bank four billion kronor and cautioned it to comply with anti-money laundering regulations.
Prosecutors eventually prosecuted Bonnesen, accusing her of “intentionally or by aggravated negligence” supplying incorrect or misleading information about the bank’s efforts to prevent and identify money laundering.
“The court concludes that the former CEO disseminated misleading statements in interviews with the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and the Swedish news agency TT in connection to the bank’s release of its third quarterly report for 2018,” the court said in a statement.
“The statements conveyed the misleading message that there did not exist any suspicious money laundering links to the operations in Estonia of another bank,” it added.
Bonnesen’s comments were deemed to be “liable to influence the assessment of the Swedish bank from a financial point of view, and thereby cause a loss,” according to the court.
Prosecutors had also charged Bonnesen with revealing insider information by informing the bank’s main owners that the investigative documentary was coming.
However, the appeals court found that the information shared with the owners was not of “specific enough nature to be considered insider information,” it said in its ruling.
It — like the district court — therefore acquitted Bonnesen of the charge.