The London Guardian says that it, with the help of other publications, has uncovered a US$2.2 billion 'laundromat' that made more than 16,000 clandestine payments to politicians in the European Union.

Bank records leaked to the Danish newspaper Berlingske, which eventually made their way to the Guardian, pertain to 30 action-packed months between 2012 and 2014. In this time, according to the paper, people in Azerbaijan and Russia channelled money to limited liability partnerships in the UK through various European bank accounts. Estonian News says that the lion's share of the US$1.6 billion that went through Estonia was routed through a branch of Danske Bank.

Flemming Pristed, the head of Danske Bank's legal department, told Compliance Matters: “We have previously established that, in the period leading up to 2014, our branch in Estonia had inadequate measures in place to prevent Danske Bank from being exploited for money laundering and other illegal activities.

"We have taken the steps necessary to remedy this. We do not in any way want to be exploited for money laundering or other illegal activities. Since 2014, we have terminated relationships with all customers that were unable to document a legitimate purpose for maintaining an account in Estonia, and we have tightened our procedures and controls significantly. In recent years, we have generally stepped up our AML measures and made a huge effort to prevent exploitation. We cannot guarantee that all attempts to launder money through Danske Bank will be unsuccessful, but it has never been harder than it is now.

"If we found reason to submit reports on suspicious circumstances to the authorities, we did so. It is then for the authorities to conduct investigations and decide whether and to what extent the purpose of the transactions was illegal. We are co-operating fully with the authorities since we all share the same interest in combating money laundering and other illegal activities.”

"On the basis of the suspicion of possible money laundering or other illegal activities, we have decided to take another look at the situation in Estonia during the period leading up to 2014. We have started various investigations to establish what exactly took place during that period and to learn from what happened then. These efforts form part of our measures to make it as difficult as possible to exploit Danske Bank for money laundering or other illegal activities.”

The bank, however, declined to answer our questions about whether any actual money laundering took place there, whether it processed US$1.6 billion in dirty money, what other illegal activity took place, what form the irregular payments took, and whether it had suffered from any regulatory action because of the problem.

Postimees, an Estonian paper, said that the actual total was $2.9 billion and Azerbaijani firms made about $2½ billion to Estonian banks between 2012 and 2014. It and other papers say that these sums went through Danske Bank to two politicians in the EU, plus a journalist who wrote propaganda for the regime of Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, and to various businesses, some of whose ownership was unknown.

The Guardian says that the bank records reveal many payments to EU politicans such as the German Eduard Lintner, who used to be an MP and belonged to the Christian Social Union, and an Italian man called Luca Volontè who used to chair a centre-right group of politicians in one of the EU's political bodies. Apparently €2 million went to his human rights foundation, Fondazione Novae Terrae in Milan. He denies any wrongdoing and is trying to have his money laundering and corruption case dismissed. Both he and Lintner are staunch supporters of the Azerbaijani regime.