When storms swarm around Swedbank and Danske Bank in the fall of 2018, SEB proudly reports on their work on money laundering in Estonia.

"In Estonia, we have conducted 21 money laundering-related audits with the Estonian Financial Supervisory Authority since 2008 and 9 independent independent audits since 2008. And we have no red flags," says Johan Torgeby in the third quarter report 2018.

Want to take control

Johan Torgeby became CEO in 2017 and has worked at the bank since 2009. He has been on the bank's management since 2014. He should know about the extent of the money laundering problem at the bank. Several of his colleagues in the management team have worked in the bank's Baltic branch. Just as in Swedbank, SEB says that they mostly have customers residing in the Baltic States, and also that they are a corporate bank. In its annual reports, on the other hand, SEB divides the bank's operations in the Baltic States into two parts: office operations and private banking, banking services for high value net income people, that is, very wealthy people.

After Johan Torgeby refused to be interviewed by SVT's Assignment Review, SEB sent late pages to publish the flows from foreign customers to the bank in Estonia. SEB wants to take control of the story of their operations in the Baltic States.

Plenty of red flags

Now that the bank chooses to rely on foreigners' transactions in Estonia, Johan Torgeby's appearance in front of investors and shareholders appears to be remarkable. For red flags it seems to have been plenty.

Between the years 2009 - 2018, this amounts to a total of EUR 47.7 billion, equivalent to SEK 500 billion that was closed through the bank by foreign customers in Estonia alone. The situation in Latvia and Lithuania is still unknown. For that, SEB has chosen not to tell about. And if we buy the bank's own crisis communication - and their own definition of a high-risk customer, that's about a total of SEK 80 billion in today's rate. Money the bank obviously should not have taken in with pliers.

When SVT's Assignment Review reviews 194 high-risk customers living abroad, the problems in the sample also appear to be anything but limited. 130 customers with transactions worth SEK 2 billion are flagged red: There is a strong suspicion of money laundering.

The Magnitsky business is shoveling

What is most needed in the material Assignment Review has access to is the SEK 475 million that the bank is suspected of washing for those involved in the Magnitsky business. Sergei Magnitsky was killed when he tried to expose corruption in Russia and the money is blood-stained. This is something that the bank has always been able to pay attention to to investors and the general public.

SEB also does not want to tell you how much the bank has earned on so-called non-resident clients, high-risk customers who are not resident in the country. At Danske Bank's Estonian unit for foreign customers, the return on equity was several hundred percent at most. This compares with a few percent at most for the bank as a whole.

If the situation was the same on SEB, it should have ringed a lot of warning bells for a long time and maybe one and another red flag. Assignment Review shows that there has been suspected money laundering in SEB's Baltic operations. It is possible that SEB received only a small part of the money-laundering cake from Russia - but being a little better than the worst in the class is not good enough.