Swedish multinational banking group Swedbank recently announced that the U.S. Department of Justice closed an investigation into the bank. According to a press release issued by the bank on January 14, 2026, an inquiry launched by the DOJ in 2019 to investigate “Swedbank’s historical anti-money laundering work” was closed without enforcement. In the same statement, Swedbank confirmed that an investigation launched by the Department of Financial Services in New York continues. The announcement comes just months after Swedbank disclosed, in September 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission closed an investigation into the bank’s “historic disclosures of information.”
In 2019, multiple jurisdictions launched investigations into Swedbank’s compliance programs after a Swedish news outlet issued a television broadcast accusing the bank of engaging in money laundering in Estonia. In its 2019 annual report, Swedbank announced that the Swedish and Estonian authorities had initiated investigations into the bank’s compliance with anti-money laundering (“AML”) regulations. In the same report, Swedbank revealed that it was also being investigated by U.S. authorities and that the investigations might “take several years” to complete. Since the 2019 broadcast, Swedbank has taken steps to address its AML shortcomings and has paid millions of dollars in fines to resolve alleged AML breaches, including SEK 4 billion (approximately $386 million) to Swedish authorities in 2020 and SEK 46.6 million (approximately $5.5 million) to Nasdaq Stockholm in 2021. In 2023, Swedbank Latvia AS also reached a $3.4 million settlement with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to resolve its potential civil liability for 386 apparent violations of U.S. sanctions.