Former Swedbank CEO Sentenced to 15 Months for Failing to Disclose Money Laundering Risks

The former CEO of Swedbank, Birgitte Bonnesen, was sentenced to 15 months in prison by a Swedish appeals court on Tuesday for failing to disclose the bank’s exposure to money laundering risks. The Svea Court of Appeal found Bonnesen guilty of gross fraud in her management of anti-money laundering (AML) protocols in Estonia, overturning a previous acquittal by a lower court.

"The Court of Appeal convicts the former managing director of gross fraud," the Svea Court of Appeal stated in its decision. While the court sentenced Bonnesen to 15 months in prison, it noted that one of its members disagreed with the sentencing aspect of the judgment.

Bonnesen’s lawyer, Per E. Samuelson, expressed shock at the ruling, confirming plans to appeal. “It’s a shock. A shock for Birgitte, a shock for me. It’s a verdict I haven’t had time to read yet, but it doesn’t agree at all with my legal opinion of how this should have gone,” Samuelson said.

Bonnesen was originally indicted in 2022, with accusations from the Swedish Economic Crime Authority that she had repeatedly misled the public and shareholders in 2018 and 2019 regarding the bank’s exposure to suspected money laundering. Prosecutors argued that she provided misleading information—either intentionally or through negligence—about Swedbank’s AML measures in Estonia.

"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 appeals court noted. "The information was likely to influence the assessment of the Swedish bank in financial terms and thereby cause damage," it added.

Bonnesen, who served as CEO during the 2019 money laundering scandal linked to Swedbank’s Baltic operations, had denied the charges. Initially, a district court in 2023 found her not guilty of all charges. However, the appeals court’s ruling has now reversed that outcome.

Prosecutors claimed that Bonnesen misled both shareholders and the public about Swedbank’s exposure to the scandal, which stemmed from the broader Danske Bank Russian money laundering case in the Baltics. This scandal, which involved €800 billion in suspicious transactions from Estonian, Russian, and Latvian sources through Danske Bank’s Estonia branch between 2007 and 2015, led to Danske Bank paying over $2 billion in fines to U.S. authorities in 2023.

In February 2019, Swedbank also came under investigation by Estonian authorities for suspicious transactions related to the Danske Bank scandal. Swedish media at the time reported that at least 40 billion Swedish crowns (€3.5 billion) had been transferred between accounts at Swedbank and Danske Bank in the Baltics between 2007 and 2015.

As a result of the scandal, Bonnesen was dismissed from her position as Swedbank CEO in March 2019. Following the investigation, Swedbank was fined a record €350 million by Swedish and Estonian regulators. In 2023, Swedbank announced that it was no longer under investigation for money laundering or suspected criminal activities.

By fLEXI tEAM