Nordea Bank reaches $35 million settlement with New York tied to Panama Papers

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Nordea Bank agreed to pay a $35 million civil fine to settle charges by a top New York regulator that the Finland-listed bank failed to properly police money laundering and other criminal activities, including matters uncovered in the Panama Papers scandal.

New York state financial services superintendent Adrienne Harris faulted Nordea's inadequate due diligence over customers and high-risk banking partners, saying even the bank recognized its oversight faced a "critical" risk of failure.

Jamie Graham, Nordea's chief compliance officer, said the Helsinki-based bank was pleased to settle, and acknowledged that it had historically "underestimated the complexity of preventing financial crime and the resources needed for that purpose."

New York said Nordea was linked to billions of dollars of high-risk transactions between 2008 and 2019, including at a Vesterport, Denmark, branch that implicated the bank in schemes known as the Russian Laundromat and Azerbaijani Laundromat.

A consent order said Nordea "acknowledged its shortcomings" with respect to anti-money laundering procedures at the former Denmark branch, at former branches in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and in correspondent bank and customer relationships.

Published in 2016, the Panama Papers provided details on thousands of offshore accounts and entities, including tax havens linked to individuals like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi.

They were based on leaks of about 11.5 million documents from the now-defunct Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Nordea said it will include the $35 million fine as a charge in third-quarter results.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Potter)