Denmark’s financial watchdog has asked the National Unit for Serious Crime (NSK) to open an additional police investigation into Nordea Finans Danmark, following an anti-money laundering inspection at the company in June 2023.

Nordea Finans Danmark is part of Nordea Bank.

The referral stems from an inspection carried out between 7 and 9 June 2023 and relates to a possible breach of the Money Laundering Act.

The Danish Financial Supervisory Authority said, “the company has not had sufficient knowledge of the customers for a large group of customers”.

The authority said that, for many customers who received credit cards, the company had not adequately established why the cards were requested or how they were expected to be used.

It described this as a systematic weakness and said notes in customer records were not enough to determine the purpose and intended nature of the relationship.

It also said the company had failed to carry out risk assessments, including risk classification, for a large number of customers.

In the authority’s view, this meant the company had not examined whether particular factors could have raised the risk linked to those relationships from a money laundering or terrorist financing standpoint.

The company said that as part of the follow-up process, the authority had put forward a proposal for an administrative fine tied to two orders that had already been met.

Nordea Finans Danmark said it could not accept the proposal because, in its view, the authority’s interpretation goes well beyond the law’s requirements, and the proposed fine is disproportionate to the administrative shortcomings identified.

At the time, Nordea Finans Danmark had nearly 155,000 customers. Neither the company nor the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority found any suspicion of money laundering in the 21,000 customer cases covered by the police report, according to the company.

Those cases mainly involved ordinary Danish consumers, including people who had bought goods through instalment payments.

The authority said Nordea Finans Danmark had failed to meet the AML Act’s requirements on customer due diligence for the customers concerned, and that the breaches provide grounds for criminal liability under section 78 of the AML Act.

In a statement, Nordea Finans Danmark said it “fundamentally disagrees with the supervisory authority’s assessment. Nordea Finans Danmark A/S had sufficient knowledge of and had risk assessed the customers, who were ordinary Danes and well-established companies. Therefore, the police report is out of proportion”.