US files lawsuit against scandal-hit Danske Bank

The United States and a US pension fund have filed a claim in a Danish court seeking more than $1.6 million for lost investments following a money laundering scandal that engulfed Danske Bank, their lawyer confirmed.

“A lawsuit was filed in September against Danske Bank and its former CEO Thomas Borgen,” lawyer Thomas Donatzky said on Tuesday, adding that he could not provide any details.

The Danish financial daily Børsen, which first reported on the lawsuit, said the US government and pension fund were seeking 10 million kroner (1.3 million euros) due to losses suffered after shares in Danske Bank plunged in 2018 when the bank got caught up in huge money laundering schemes.

An investigation carried out by an outside law firm for the bank found that it could not account for the origin of more than $220 billion that flowed through its Estonian branch from 2007 to 2015, much of which was suspected to have come from Russia.

Borgen resigned in the wake of the scandal and the bank closed its operations in the Baltic States and Russia.

“The contingent liabilities related to civil shareholder claims and related amount described in today’s media coverage is part of the disclosure in our Annual Report for 2020,” Danske Bank said in a statement.

The report put the total of such claims at 12.4 billion kroner at the end of 2020.