Nordea Bank Risks Almost $1 Billion Fine in Denmark Money Laundering Case

Nordea Bank Abp is facing a potential 6.6 billion-krone ($988 million) penalty as a Danish court prepares to rule in a case over failures to prevent money laundering that go back more than a decade. The case marks the first time a money-laundering investigation against a bank has gone to court in Denmark, where previous incidences have been settled. Prosecutors are seeking the fine related to 26 billion kroner ($3.9 billion) of transactions from 2012 to 2015, mainly through one Nordea branch in Copenhagen. Nordea has denied the charges. The court is due to rule on Monday. The National Special Crime Unit has described the indictment as the most comprehensive involving violations of the Money Laundering Act seen in the Danish banking sector. Danske Bank settled a landmark case in late 2022, in which it admitted to all money laundering-related charges. Among fines it paid to various authorities including the US Department of Justice, the lender agreed to pay 3.5 billion kroner to settle with Danish law enforcement — exactly a quarter of the 14 billion kroner worth of suspicious transactions that Denmark had identified. Nordea was charged with having deficient controls, ignoring alarms and failing to report suspicious money flows to authorities. One key allegation is that the bank failed to conduct adequate checks on transactions carried out by 25 clients, despite red flags including letterbox business addresses and opaque ownership structures. The bank has maintained throughout the proceedings that it disagrees with the authorities’ legal assessment. It repeated during the court case that it isn’t guilty of the charges and said its position had been further substantiated during the proceedings. “Our controls and processes ten years ago could – particularly when viewed from today’s perspective – have been better,” Nordea said in an emailed comment to Bloomberg in June. “But there is a difference between whether you could have done something better and whether you have committed a criminal act.” Nordea has previously said it expects to be fined in Denmark for weak anti-money-laundering processes and procedures in the past. It made a €95 million provision in 2019 for related matters. The size of a potential penalty has been a central issue surrounding the case. Hans Fogtdal, a lawyer and former deputy public prosecutor at the National Special Crime Unit, previously said a Danish court could impose a fine of as much as 6.5 billion kroner based on legislation effective from 2019 that allows penalties equal to a quarter of the suspicious transactions passing through a bank. Nordea has said the case goes back in some instances more than a decade and is, among other things, being assessed based on subsequent regulations. The National Special Crime Unit previously declined to say what penalty it would seek but confirmed that it disagreed with Nordea over its size. Prosecutors subsequently sought a 6.6 billion-krone penalty in written procedures in the case. Photograph: A Nordea Bank AB office in Copenhagen; photo credit: Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg Copyright 2026 Bloomberg.