Heads of the Nordic and Baltic financial supervisors met today in Stockholm. They agreed on measures to co-operate with each other more closely with the aim of fighting money laundering and terrorist finance.

As the first step in this process, the existing model for cross-border co-operation about money-laundering supervision will be strengthened. The authorities agreed on the following at the meeting.

The group will establish a permanent working group with representatives from each country's financial supervisory authority, to wit the regulators of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden. The group will maintain regular contact and exchange experiences and information with the goal of being more effective in the prevention of money laundering. Anti-money-laundering supervision is to be more co-ordinated in the frozen North than heretofore. The parties will draft up a memorandum of understanding to seal the deal.

As if to underline their resolve, Danish authorities have charged the Norwegian Thomas Borgen, Danske Bank's CEO who fell on his sword last September and was replaced temporarily by Jesper Nielsen, with an offence related to money laundering at the bank's branch in Estonia, according to a report in the Danish newspaper Børsen. Police searched Borgen's home on 12 March, as they did those of several former managers, according to his lawyer Peter Schradieck. The state prosecutor for special economic and international crime (SØIK) reportedly pressed the charges.

Denmark’s state prosecutor charged Danske on four counts of breaking the Anti-Money-Laundering Act last November. British, French and American authorities are still investigating the affair.

In January, a New York pension fund in the US District Court in Manhattan sued Danske Bank A/S and four former top executives (Borgen and three Americans), accusing them of defrauding investors and inflating Danske's share price by hiding and failing to stop widespread money laundering at the Nordic bank's branch in Estonia.

According to Reuters, Danske Bank has just appointed a new head of financial crime - Mr Satnam Lehal, 41, from Morgan Stanley. Lehal was MS's managing director for financial crime. He will report to chief compliance officer Philipple Vollot.