In 2017, it became clear that Danske Bank served as a laundry room for money from Russia and Azerbaijan. But as early as October last year, the Bloomberg News Agency received information from the Estonian Riksbank, which showed that the problem could be much bigger than that. The data showed that $ 500 billion, about SEK 5 billion, moved across borders to and from the small economy's banks during the years 2008 to 2015.

Some were very harmless transactions - sales of milk to Lithuania - and the Estonian Riksbank emphasized that it was not possible to find out from the figures how much about transactions to and from people who do not live in the country. Despite this, many, including myself, went above and beyond the figure. In an economy that last year as a whole was in the order of SEK 230 billion, there will be relatively very, very, very much money moving across the borders in a banking system that is entirely dominated by Nordic and Swedish banks. Perhaps the banks themselves should have started lifting stones there already and openly report how they have become tools for people they should not have had as customers.

Concerns for billion fines

As yet, no one, apart from Assignment Review editors, knows what questions they intend to ask SEB. And which country in the Baltic is the focus. Not even SEB, which guarantees itself that they hope they already know about the suspicious transactions. Today's price drop shows that the information seems to come as a news to the bank's shareholders. The main concern should be that, when sufficiently engraved, another bank runs the risk of falling under the auspices of the US Treasury, and in the same way that Nordea and probably Swedbank are punished with a billion fines.

Swedbank also handled UG's interview last week with going out and announcing that they had been asked out of the program but did not want to go into details. One of the reasons may be that the Swedish Crime Authority initiated an investigation into insider crimes after Swedbank, prior to a previous Assignment Review publication, chose to only tell a group of large owners about UG's information.

Failed crisis management

If SEB's press release is intended as an aggressive crisis management strategy, it should be seen as a failure that increases rather than decreases interest in Assignment Review's upcoming program. In any case, I'm thinking of putting myself in front of the TV.