In an attempt to weather the money-laundering scandal that is engulfing the Nordic banks, Swedbank has decided to set up an anti-financial-crime unit which will combine IT with 'investigative resources' to detect financial crime and to deal with regulators.

The unit will tackle the full gamut of financial crime, including money laundering, terrorist finance, fraud and cyber-crime. It will also try to keep the bank's and customers' information safe and look after its employees' "physical security." Anders Ekedahl will run it and be responsible for AML processes throughout the Swedbank empire. The current Head of Group Compliance, Cecilia Hernqvist, will be part of the unit and will co-ordinate internal and external investigations in the AML sphere, and this will include co-operation with the authorities. Anders Karlsson has appointed Ingrid Harbo as acting Head of Compliance.

The AML processes will include know-your-customer or KYC processes, the classification of risks, the monitoring of transactions and regulatory reporting (or other reports to the authorities).

Following on from this policy, Anders Karlsson has appointed Tarmo Pajumets as acting head of group IT and the board of directors has appointed Anders Erlandsson as acting chief audit executive. Anders Ekedahl and Tarmo Pajumets will both report to the CEO and be members of the group Executive Committee. Ingrid Harbo will report to the CEO and is co-opted to the group executive committee. All changes will take effect immediately.

On top of this, Swedbank has called in advisors from outside its walls, including the international law firm of Clifford Chance, which is about to take charge of an internal investigation touched off by Swedbank's involvement in the Danske Bank débâcle. To help it, the law firm has appointed FTI, the international consultancy, to provide forensic expertise.

The internal investigation will include, among other things, a review of the bank's relationships, past and present, with customers in its Baltic subsidiaries, the preliminary findings from previous internal reviews, the bank's response to recommendations made by previous internal reviews and the bank's AML compliance processes.

The internal investigation will also incorporate work conducted by a consultancy called the Forensic Risk Alliance which looked at people and companies connected to the so-called '50 list' which the Swedish broadcaster SVT publicised last month. Reuters revealed the nature of this list to some extent at the time when it wrote: "Swedbank says on investor call that if any names on the 50 alleged client list from SVT report were customers of the bank, they are no longer customers of the bank and the last transaction has taken place May 2017."

Clifford Chance is also talking to US authorities on the bank's behalf. Several internal and external investigations are already in progress and the board of Swedbank does not want to start any new ones. It has decided to appoint the attorney Biörn Riese as an external legal advisor to help it through these investigations.

NB On 29 April Swedbank spokeswoman Unni Jerndal finally responded to our email and told Compliance Matters: "The AFC unit at Swedbank sums up to around 200 people at the moment and our acting CEO Anders Karlsson has said that the AFC will get the resources that they need."