Swedbank's former CEO Birgitte Bonnesen is convicted in the Court of Appeal. She is sentenced to one year and three months in prison for gross fraud.
The Court of Appeal finds that Bonnesen has provided misleading information in contact with the media.
It's historic and completely unexpected, says Louise Brown, currently employed by Advisense, working with financial crime prevention for banks, among others.
It's an interesting assessment made by the Court of Appeal. We can almost already start talking about Lex Bonnesen.
"Few could imagine"
Why is it a historic verdict?
No bank CEO in Sweden has previously been sentenced to prison. I think few could even imagine that something like this could happen.
Brown believes that the verdict, which Bonnesen's lawyer says will be appealed, will have significant consequences for the banking industry.
The Court of Appeal's verdict is interesting because it so clearly focuses on the overall perspective, on the skewed selection of information that Bonnesen has communicated and how it was done. The financial industry has made enormous investments in recent years in anti-money laundering efforts, part of which is to make adequate risk assessments but also to communicate correctly about the risks, she says, and continues:
What risks exist, how do you value and manage them, and is there a defensible communication about the risks?
Said she was certain
Bonnesen said in the autumn of 2018, among other things, that she was completely certain that there was no money laundering in Swedbank's operations in the Baltics. The Court of Appeal finds that Bonnesen was aware of what was going on within the bank.
This is unique. The verdict looks at the overall communication.
