The outcome of the sanctions review will be presented in April 2020. The decision to initiate a formal criminal trial is a step in FI's investigation process of the bank's control and control of measures against money laundering.

"This means that FI considers that there are sufficient reasons to test whether the deficiencies and weaknesses observed in the investigation work should lead to a sanction or if the investigation should be terminated in some other way," writes Finansinspektionen.

The investigation is conducted in collaboration with the regulatory authorities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and may result in fines or warnings.

Swedbank is also being tried

The background is suspicion of money laundering in the bank's operations in the Baltic States. It was in November that SVT's Assignment Review and TT revealed that customers in SEB with accounts in the Baltic countries are suspected of having laundered money from serious financial crime through the Swedish bank.

The equivalent of almost half a billion SEK has been closed through companies linked to one of the world's most well-known money laundering companies - and accounts in SEB. That is more than three times as much as in the case of Swedbank.

Swedbank has already undergone a sanction trial, which is expected to be completed in March 2020.