COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Danish prosecutors have dropped charges against former Danske Bank chief executive Thomas Borgen and two other senior executives as part of a money laundering investigation, business daily Borsen reported on Thursday citing their lawyers.
The Danish state prosecutor filed preliminary charges against nine former managers in 2019 accused of breaching Danish money laundering laws.
Danske Bank is under investigation in Denmark and several countries over some 200 billion euros ($242 billion) of suspicious transactions that passed through the bank’s Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.
The prosecutor said in January charges against six of them had been dropped, without naming those charged.
On Thursday, lawyers representing Borgen, former finance chief Henrik Ramlau-Hansen and former head of business banking Lars Stensgaard Mørch told Borsen charges against their clients had been dropped.
A spokesman for the prosecution service confirmed to Reuters that charges against all nine former Danske Bank managers had been dropped.
Individuals must have shown gross negligence in order to be convicted under the Danish money laundering act.
“It is the prosecutor’s overall legal assessment that there is no evidence that any individuals have shown negligence to such an extent that it can be characterized as gross and that they have thus violated the law,” the spokesman said.
A criminal investigation against Danske Bank for possible violation of money laundering legislation is still ongoing, he said.
($1 = 0.8249 euros)
(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
