“THE bank has clearly failed to live up to its responsibility,” said Ole Andersen, chairman of Danske Bank, on September 19th. Well, indeed. The findings of an inquiry into the laundering of money, much of it from Russia, through Danske’s Estonian branch are sobering. The euro amount rinsed through the branch’s books runs to 12 digits and Danske missed chance after chance to stop the sluice. To no one’s surprise its chief executive, Thomas Borgen, has resigned.
9月19日，丹麥丹斯克銀行主席奧萊·安德森說道：“顯然，銀行沒有盡到自己的責任。”確實如此。在對丹斯克銀行愛沙尼亞分支機構的洗錢行為——大部分來自俄羅斯——調查結果發人深省。進入該分行賬簿的歐元金額高達12位數，而丹斯克銀行屢次錯失阻止這股洪流的機會。不出所料，該行首席執行官托馬斯•博根下臺。
Denmark’s biggest bank had already admitted doing too little to prevent the abuse of its branch between 2007, when it bought Finland’s Sampo Bank, the unit’s owner, and 2015. An 87-page report by Bruun & Hjejle, a law firm, both tries to quantify the suspicious activity and traces how Danske’s anti-laundering procedures went so catastrophically wrong.
這家丹麥最大的銀行此前承認，在2007年從其所有者，芬蘭的Sampo銀行手中收購到2015年期間，在阻止濫用權力方面無所作為。Bruun和Hjejle律師事務所出具了一份長達87頁的報告，試圖對可疑的資金流動加以量化，追蹤丹斯克的反洗錢程序為何會犯下如此大錯。
The main conduit was the branch’s “non-resident portfolio”, comprising about 10,000 accounts, of which 3,000-4,000 were open at any one time. The branch also housed another 5,000 non-residents’ accounts. Starting with the fishiest, the investigators have examined 6,200 accounts and deem “the vast majority” to be suspicious. By contrast, the branch had reported only 760 clients to the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Estonian police division dealing with financial crime. The investigators have identified 177 customers—mostly partnerships registered in Britain or well-known tax havens—potentially involved in the “Russian Laundromat”, a vast fraud exposed by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a group of investigative journalists.
一個主要渠道是該分行的“非居民投資組合”，包括約1萬個賬戶，而其中有3000至4000個賬戶在隨時開立的。該分行還有5000個非居民賬戶。調查人員從最可疑的賬戶開始調查，檢查了6200個賬戶，認定“絕大多數”為可疑。相比之下，該分行向負責金融犯罪的愛沙尼亞警察部門金融情報部門報告的客戶只有760人。調查人員確認，有177名客戶——主要是在英國註冊的合夥企業或知名的避稅天堂——可能參與了“俄羅斯自助洗錢店”的行動。“俄羅斯自助洗錢店”是由一組調查記者發起的“有組織犯罪與腐敗報告項目”曝光的一項大規模金融詐騙活動。
Mere suspicion, of course, proves nothing. As the investigators did not sift the 9.5m transactions on the 15,000 accounts, they cannot say how much was laundered. But by any reasonable guess, the sum is staggering: €200bn ($234bn at current exchange rates), mostly in euros and dollars, flowed through the accounts, 23% of it from Russia. “It is expected that a large part of the payments were suspicious,” the report drily concludes.
當然，僅僅是懷疑並不能證明什麼。由於調查人員沒有對這1.5萬個賬戶中的950萬筆交易進行仔細篩選，無法說出洗錢的數額。不過，據合理地猜測，總涉及的數額是觸目驚心：流經這些賬戶的金額達到2000億歐元，主要是歐元和美元，有23%來自俄羅斯。這份報告直言：“預計大部分款項都是可疑的。”
Chances to clean up went begging almost from the day Danske bought Sampo. In 2007 the Estonian authorities found flaws in Sampo’s procedures, and the Russian central bank told Danish supervisors that non-resident customers “permanently participate” in transactions intended to avoid taxes and customs payments, or to launder money to the tune of “billions of roubles monthly”. The next year Danske dropped, on cost grounds, a plan to bring its Baltic subsidiaries onto its group information-technology platform.
從丹斯克收購薩姆波銀行之日起，就有機會進行內部清理。2007年，愛沙尼亞當局發現薩姆波銀行內部流程存在缺陷，俄羅斯央行對丹麥監管機構表示，非居民客戶“一直在參與”旨在避稅和避稅的交易，或以“每月數十億盧布”的規模洗錢。第二年，丹斯克以成本為由放棄了將其波羅的海子公司加入全集團信息技術平臺的計劃。
In 2013 a correspondent bank clearing dollar transactions from the branch (J.P. Morgan, says the Financial Times), ended the relationship. That December an employee in Estonia blew the whistle; soon afterwards internal auditors pointed out weaknesses in anti-money-laundering practices. Even then Danske believed any problems were being fixed and misjudged their scale. Only in 2015 did the bank begin a “proper run-off” of the non-resident portfolio, the report says. The last accounts were closed in early 2016.
2013年，一家清算來自該行事美元交易的代理銀行(據英國《金融時報》報道稱是摩根大通銀行)結束了合作關係。那年12月，愛沙尼亞的一名僱員曝料此事;不久，內審人員指出了反洗錢操作中存在不足。即使在那時，丹斯克銀行仍然認為解決了所有的問題，並錯誤地判斷了問題的嚴重性。上述報告稱，丹斯克銀行直到2015年才開始有非居民投資組合“適當地流失”。最後一個賬戶是在2016年初消戶。
Contrite, Danske is giving its gross income from the branch over the nine years, DKr1.5bn ($235m), to a fund to fight financial crime. But what took it so long to spot trouble? Managers and systems failed at pretty much every level, from Tallinn to Copenhagen. The branch was allowed too much independence, partly because it was small, accounting for only 0.5% of Danske’s assets. But it was also highly profitable, making a return on allocated capital of 60% in 2013, when the Lithuanian branch earned only 16% and the Latvian one 7%. That should have rung bells. Employees may have colluded with crooks: the bank has reported eight to Estonian police.
丹斯克銀行懊悔不已，將其過去9年的總收入——15億丹麥克朗(合2.35億美元)——捐給了基金，用於打擊金融犯罪。但是，為何花了如此長的時間才發現問題呢?從塔林到哥本哈根，管理人員和管理系統幾乎在每一個層面上都沒有起到作用。該分行獲最太多的獨立性，一個原因在於它規模小，只佔丹斯克資產的0.5%。可是，它的盈利能力很高，在2013年，該行的立陶宛分行分配資本回報率為60%，拉脫維亞分行的回報率僅為7%。這種情況應該敲響警鐘。僱員可能與詐騙人員勾結：丹斯克銀行向愛沙尼亞警方起訴了8人。
Danske’s is just the most spectacular of a string of money-laundering scandals afflicting Europe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. This month ING, a Dutch bank, was fined €775m; its chief financial officer lost his job. The European Commission recently proposed giving the European Banking Authority, a supervisor, more power to co-ordinate national authorities and even to compel them to start investigations. Tighter controls cannot come too soon.
從地中海到波羅的海的一系列洗錢醜聞中，丹斯克銀行的醜聞是最為引人注目。九月，荷蘭銀行被罰款7.75億歐元，首席財務官也丟了飯碗。歐盟委員會最近提議賦予監管機構歐洲銀行管理局更多權力，以協調成員國當局，甚至要推動成員國展開調查。更嚴格的監管措施應儘早到來。
編譯：李圓敏
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