On September 10, the Svea Court of Appeal sentenced Swedbank's former CEO Birgitte Bonnesen to one year and three months in prison for aggravated fraud. She had previously been acquitted in the district court.
The Court of Appeal found that the then-CEO provided misleading information in interviews with Svenska Dagbladet and TT when the bank released its third quarterly report in 2018.
The information conveyed the misleading message that there were no suspected money-laundering links to Danske Bank's operations in Estonia. According to the court, the information was likely to influence assessments of the Swedish bank's financial position and thereby cause damage.
Birgitte Bonnesen has denied any wrongdoing throughout the process. She was forced to step down as CEO of Swedbank in March 2019. A year later, the bank was fined four billion kronor by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FI) for serious shortcomings in its anti-money-laundering work in the Baltics.
