Investor Who Made Laundering Claims Says He’s Got More on Danske
Investor Who Made Laundering Claims Says He's Got More on Danske
(Bloomberg) -- Bill Browder, the co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management and a driving force behind criminal money laundering complaints against banks, says he’s got more to reveal on Danske Bank A/S.
“We have some new information that we are presenting to the Danish authorities on Danske Bank which we think is in the public interest,” Browder said in an email.
After filing allegations against Danske and Nordea Bank Abp, Browder is planning to present new material at a press conference in the Danish parliament on Thursday. He’s also planning to provide updates on investigations into Danske, Nordea and the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, he said.
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Danske spokesman Kenni Leth declined to comment. At Nordea, spokesman Petter Brunnberg said the bank is “always cooperating with relevant authorities in all countries where we are present, but we never disclose the details of our conversations,” in an emailed response to questions.
Browder said in a tweet Thursday afternoon that he’d just left the Danish prosecutors’ office after discussing with officials his evidence of laundering at Danske and Nordea.
Danish lawmaker Michael Aastrup will host the press conference after participating in a parliamentary briefing on the Magnitsky Act. The Act is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a former colleague of Browder who died in a Russian prison in 2009 after investigating widespread corruption. Browder has lobbied for Europe-wide adoption of the Act, which targets human rights offenders.
Danske is already the subject of multiple criminal investigations, including by the U.S. Department of Justice, and faces fines potentially in the billions of dollars. A probe commissioned by Danske and published in September found that a large part of around $230 billion that flowed through a non-resident unit in Estonia was probably laundered.
To contact the reporter on this story: Frances Schwartzkopff in Copenhagen at fschwartzko1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net;Christian Wienberg at cwienberg@bloomberg.net
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