Denmark
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FILE PHOTO: Danske Bank sign is seen at the bank’s Estonian branch in Tallinn, Estonia August 3, 2018. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo
April 17, 2019
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – The EU banking watchdog has closed an investigation of financial regulators in Estonia and Denmark in relation to suspected money laundering activities by Danske Bank after it did not find any breach of EU law, the Estonian FSA said on Wednesday.
The European Banking Authority (EBA) in February said it had opened a formal investigation into a possible breach of EU law by Estonian and Danish regulators.
Denmark’s largest bank Danske Bank, has admitted that 200 billion euros ($226 billion) of suspicious transactions flowed through its Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.
(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, editing by Louise Heavens)
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FILE PHOTO: Businessman Bill Browder speaks after the coroner ruled that Russian businessman Alexander Perepilichnyy probably died of natural causes outside his home in 2012, after the inquest concluded at the Old Bailey, in London, Britain, December 19, 2018. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo
April 17, 2019
By Esha Vaish and Gederts Gelzis
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Bill Browder, an investor who campaigns to expose corruption, has taken a criminal complaint against Swedbank to Latvian authorities, alleging it was involved in a Russian money laundering scandal.
Swedbank is being investigated by Swedish and Baltic financial watchdogs after broadcaster SVT reported it processed gross transactions worth up to 20 billion euros ($22.6 billion) a year from high-risk, non-resident clients, mostly Russians, through its Estonian branch between 2010 and 2016.
These inquiries follow a fast-growing money laundering scandal centered on Danske Bank, which said last year that its Estonian branch had been used to move 230 billion euros ($260 billion) of suspicious payments from 2007 to 2015.
Browder, once the biggest foreign money manager in Russia, had already taken the complaint against Swedbank to Swedish and Estonian authorities, alleging that the Swedish bank’s accounts were used to launder $176 million from 2006 to 2012.
The bulk of this, $117 million, went through Swedbank’s Estonian branch and Browder’s complaint lodged with Latvian authorities, dated April 5 and seen by Reuters on Wednesday, showed some $41 million had passed through Latvia.
“We cooperate with the authorities in all our home markets in order to resolve current issues. However, we have no comment on the specific cases that Bill Browder now points to,” a Swedbank spokeswoman said in an emailed response.
Browder’s complaint, filed by his Hermitage Capital Management, called on Latvian authorities to look into the allegations alongside their ongoing broader probe into Russian money laundering links.
Latvian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
MAGNITSKY CASE
Browder has pushed for banks to be held accountable over links to a money laundering and tax fraud exposed by his former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian jail in 2009.
He had previously brought cases against Swedbank’s rivals Nordea and Danske Bank, which is now the subject of investigations in the United States, France, Denmark, Estonia and Britain.
Estonia is including Browder’s Swedbank complaint in its Danske Bank inquiry, but Sweden dropped its investigation saying there were limited transfers involving Swedish accounts and that the statute of limitations had expired.
Sweden, along with authorities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, is set to conclude its investigation into Swedbank later this year, while a separate Swedish economic crime agency inquiry into the bank’s conduct was expanded last month.
($1 = 0.8838 euros)
(Reporting by Esha Vaish in Stockholm and Gederts Gelzis in Riga; Editing by Alexander Smith)
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FILE PHOTO:Chairman of The Social Democratic Party Antti Rinne speaks to media at the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle studios in Helsinki, Finland April 15, 2019. Lehtikuva/Antti Aimo-Koivisto via REUTERS
April 15, 2019
By Justyna Pawlak
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Voters across the Nordics are telling politicians to safeguard their cherished, comprehensive welfare model but Sunday’s election in Finland shows how prohibitive costs and a surge in nationalism make it hard for parties to deliver.
The Finnish Social Democrats, who played a significant role in the growth of public services after World War Two, won the ballot for the first time in two decades, feeding off a rising sense of insecurity among voters following years of austerity.
Their victory was limited, however, by a strong showing by the anti-immigrant, nationalist Finns Party, which finished a close second at 17.5 percent of the vote behind the SDP’s 17.7 percent, final results showed.
The split underscores the fragmentation of politics in Finland and elsewhere in the Nordics where populist parties are becoming mainstream, as well as divisions over how to tackle the soaring costs of healthcare and other welfare provisions.
The Finnish left argues that tax hikes are inescapable at a time when care costs are rising and people are living longer. Many voters in Finland agree, even though the nation has one of the highest taxation rates in the world.
The nationalists, echoing a continent-wide backlash against migration over open European Union borders, say that reversing an influx of foreigners can relieve the pressure on services.
That is a red line for Social Democratic leader Antti Rinne, a 56-year-old former trade union boss, leaving him just one option – seeking out coalition partners among center-right groups that favor reforming welfare to cut costs.
“Our values are quite far apart at the moment,” Rinne said on private television broadcaster MTV on Monday, referring to Finns Party leader Jussi Halla-aho. The far-right Halla-aho was fined in 2012 for blog comments linking Islam to paedophilia and Somalis to theft. “I’ve read your blog,” Rinne said.
In Finland, which struggles with one of the fastest rates of population aging in the world, public debt is expected to fall within EU limits this year after austerity steps by the outgoing center-right government of prime minister Juha Sipila.
But social and healthcare costs are expected to jump to 26.5 billion euros per year ($30 billion) in 2035 from 18.7 billion in 2018. That would jack up such costs as a share of gross domestic product to 9.6 percent in 2035 from 7.9 percent.
At stake for the Finns is a wide array of services that now come nearly cost-free such as comprehensive health care, state pensions and home visits by nurses for the elderly.
The state was even more generous in earlier decades, when deductibles on medicine costs were lower and the state would pay for nannies to help with childcare free of charge while another child in the family was in hospital.
“Rinne has promised to raise the lowest state pensions, funded in part by higher consumption and capital gains taxes,” Capital Economics said in a research note.
“We expect these plans will end up diluted as and when the reality of coalition politics bites.”
MANEUVERING TO STAY RELEVANT
In Denmark, opinion polls ahead of an election due no later than June forecast victory for opposition parties led by the Social Democrats who are calling for a partial rollback of welfare cuts.
The Danish left has echoed some of the anti-immigration tilt of the nationalist Danish People’s Party, in what Social Democratic leader Mette Frederiksen said is an effort to ensure her party remains relevant.
Running in first place with some 28 percent of popular support, the Danish Social Democrats endorsed a “jewelry bill” which, passed in 2016, allows police to confiscate refugees’ valuables to help pay their costs, among other measures.
The Danish People’s Party is now polling at 14 percent, down from the 21 percent they had in 2015.
While the jewelry bill has not itself ensured their lead in the polls, it lent nuance to the Social Democrats’ stance on immigration, winning back some voters from the populists.
In Sweden, left-wing leader Stefan Lofven faced a similar dilemma. His only route to retaining power after an inconclusive election last September was to join forces with reform-oriented liberal parties that, like his own Social Democrats, shun the fiercely nationalist Sweden Democrats.
The price was a pledge to enact a string of largely right-wing reforms, including tax breaks for top earners and a scrapping of designs to curb the privatization of services, a decision that has appalled many rank-and-file Social Democrats.
The scale of welfare financing woes varies across the Nordics.
In Sweden, the region’s most populous nation, public finances are relatively healthy, with state debt at its lowest since the late 1970s.
But governments are obliged to stick to a budget surplus target introduced after a banking crisis in the early 1990s, meaning any cost increases as baby boomers enter retirement need to be found through means other than deficit spending.
(Reporting by Justyna Pawlak and Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, Simon Johnson and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm, Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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FILE PHOTO: Ice Hockey – 2018 IIHF World Championships – Group A – Russia v Slovakia – Royal Arena – Copenhagen, Denmark – May 14, 2018 – Nikita Gusev of Russia in action. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor/FIle Photo
April 14, 2019
Nikita Gusev, the reigning MVP of the Kontinental Hockey League, is joining the Vegas Golden Knights for their playoff run.
He signed a one-year, entry-level contract with the Golden Knights on Sunday and is expected to practice with the team on Monday.
Vegas and the San Jose Sharks were tied 1-1 in their best-of-7 series entering Sunday’s Game 3 in Las Vegas.
“He’ll join our group (Monday) and we’ll see where it goes,” Golden Knights coach Gerard Gallant told reporters. “I’m not going to make any promises either way. We’ll see what happens. I like our team. I’ve liked our team all year. If we think we need him to put in the lineup, we’ll see where it goes.”
Gusev, 26, has been on the roster of SKA St. Petersburg since the 2015-16 season. He led the league in scoring this season with 82 points (17 goals, 65 assists). He was released from his contract this week after SKA St. Petersburg was eliminated in the KHL conference finals.
He has played nine seasons in the KHL and was part of Russia’s gold-medal team in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The Tampa Bay Lightning drafted him in the seventh round of the 2012 NHL Draft. Vegas acquired his rights in a trade with Tampa Bay during the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft.
–Field Level Media
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Social Democratic Party Chairman Antti Rinne campaigns for the Finnish parliamentary elections in Espoo, Finland April 13, 2019. Lehtikuva/Heikki Saukkomaa via REUTERS
April 13, 2019
By Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland may usher in its first leftist prime minister in two decades in parliamentary elections on Sunday, as voters worry over the future of the country’s generous welfare system as the costs of caring for a rapidly aging population rise.
But if opinions polls are correct, the left-leaning Social Democrats’ ability to govern may be hampered, however, by a surge in support for the Finns Party, a nationalist group riding a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping the Nordics.
A survey commissioned by public broadcaster Yle showed the Social Democrats could win the top spot with 19 percent of the vote, giving their leader, Antti Rinne, the first shot at forming a government.
The Finns are running close second with 16.3 percent support, after scoring rapid gains since the start of this year when a series of cases of sexual abuse of minors by foreign men emerged.
With the European Parliament election less than two months away, the Finnish ballot is being watched in Brussels. A strong result for the Finns Party could bolster a nationalist bloc threatening to shake up EU policy-making.
Underscoring the growing confidence among far-right politicians in Europe, anti-immigration parties have announced plans to join forces following the May 26 EU election, in a move that could give them major say in how the continent is run.
Just as the Social Democrats are benefiting from a growing sense of insecurity among Finland’s older and poorer voters, the Finns argue that the nation has gone too far in addressing issues such as climate change and migration at its own expense.
“We are going through a cultural shock in Finland. Part of the population is in a kind of state of shock amid all the change going on, and as a result they take the Finns Party’s hand,” said Karina Jutila, chief researcher at think tank e2.
Polling stations open at 9 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Sunday and close at 8 p.m. Public broadcaster Yle will give its first estimate of the results, based on advance votes which account for 36.1 percent of the electorate this year, shortly after voting ends.
The success of Finland’s Social Democrats would mark a departure not only for Finland but also elsewhere in the region, where leftist parties have struggled in recent years, yielding some of their hold on the working class vote as anti-immigration nationalists of various stripes emerge.
In neighboring Sweden, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has precariously clung to power after his Social Democrats suffered their worst parliamentary election result in more than a century last autumn. To do so, he had to enlist the support of two liberal parties with a pledge to enact a string of far-reaching right-wing policies.
In Denmark, which holds an election in June, the Social Democrats are gaining ground, in part after espousing the populists’ anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Rinne calls his party’s immigration stance “the middle way”, favoring work-related immigration to compensate for Finland’s aging population, but he also favors allowing some refugees in on humanitarian grounds, as the country has done thus far.
The 56-year-old former union leader is also promising to raise taxes to fund welfare and combat economic inequality, which he says has risen under the ruling center-right coalition of prime minister Juha Sipila.
His talk of raising taxes is unlikely to drive off his supporters, many of whom value highly Finland’s huge welfare state.
But he will likely struggle to form a functioning coalition, if the Finns score high and with Finance Minister Petteri Orpo’s National Coalition, likely to win third place on Sunday, calling Rinne’s economic policies “irresponsible”.
Rinne has ruled out forming a government with the nationalists led by Jussi Halla-aho, 47, an anti-immigration hardliner.
Altogether 19 parties are running in the election, with eight of them holding seats in the parliament now, ranging from the environmentalist Green party polled at 12.2 percent to the tiny Feminist Party founded just two years ago.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen; Additional reporting by Attila Cser in Helsinki, Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen in Copenhagen and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm; Editing by Justyna Pawlak and Hugh Lawson)
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Danske Bank sign is seen at the bank’s Estonian branch in Tallinn, Estonia March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
April 12, 2019
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – The Danish Business Authority said on Friday that it has asked the state prosecutor for financial fraud to investigate the auditor of scandal-hit Danske Bank’s 2014 accounts, Ernst & Young.
The authority said in October that it had launched an investigation into the external audit of Danske Bank’s financial statements for 2014, as well as the auditor’s duties in relation to suspected money laundering up until 2015.
Ernst & Young said it was cooperating with the authorities.
Danske Bank is under investigation in the United States, Denmark, Estonia, France and Britain over payments from Russia, ex-Soviet states and elsewhere that were found to have flowed through its Estonian unit between 2007 and 2015.
(Reporting by Teis Jensen; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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A woman looks in the window of a shop advertising a 50% off sale in downtown Stockholm in this picture taken July 28, 2008. REUTERS/Bob Strong/File Photo
April 12, 2019
OSLO (Reuters) – The Swedish economy will slow this year, as weaker domestic demand and a cooling off in Europe push growth down to a six-year low, a Reuters poll predicted on Friday.
Home to major exporters and such global brands as Ericsson, H&M, Volvo AB and Atlas Copco, Sweden depends on demand from abroad.
Slower public spending and a drop in demand for new homes are among domestic factors expected to restrain the economy, although growth in the final quarter of 2018 was significantly higher than economists had anticipated.
Norway and Denmark, both of which have lagged their Scandinavian neighbor in recent years, will grow at a faster pace than Sweden in 2019, the poll also suggested.
The Swedish economy is expected to slow to 1.6 percent growth in 2019, down from 2.3 percent last year, and below a prediction of 1.9 percent in a Reuters poll in January. That would be the slowest expansion since 2013’s 1.2 percent.
(Writing by Terje Solsvik in Oslo; polling by Indradip Ghosh and Nagamani Lingappa; editing by Larry King)
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Ice Hockey – 2018 IIHF World Championships – Group A – Russia v Slovakia – Royal Arena – Copenhagen, Denmark – May 14, 2018 – Nikita Gusev of Russia in action. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor
April 12, 2019
The Vegas Golden Knights could be getting some offensive punch for their playoff push, and it could come from a player who has never played in the NHL, multiple outlets reported Thursday.
Nikita Gusev, the reigning MVP of Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League, could be on his way to the United States after his current team, SKA St. Petersburg, was eliminated from the playoffs by SCKA Moscow.
Gusev, 26, had 82 points in 62 games this season to lead the KHL, according to NHL.com. The left wing scored 17 goals with 65 assists. Canada’s TSN reported that Gusev’s representatives were working on a release from his current contract, which officially expires at the end of April.
“I don’t know much about him,” Vegas head coach Gerard Gallant said, according to the league website. “(Golden Knights general manager) George (McPhee) mentioned it today. … If he joins us, we’ll see what’s going to happen. Hopefully he does join us and gets some practice time in with us, but I have no idea where that’s going.”
Vegas trails its best-of-7 Western Conference playoff matchup with San Jose 1-0, with Game 2 set for Friday in the Bay Area. The Golden Knights are the defending Western Conference champions.
Gusev was a seventh-round draft pick by the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2012, but his rights were traded to Vegas in the 2017 expansion draft.
-Field Level Media
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FILE PHOTO: A logo is seen at a branch office of private Bank J. Safra Sarasin in Basel October 26, 2014. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo
April 11, 2019
By John Miller
ZURICH (Reuters) – Three Germans on trial in Switzerland for helping expose a tax-stripping scheme that cost European governments billions of euros will likely avoid prison after a verdict on Thursday that fell well short of prosecutors’ demands.
The men, Stuttgart-based lawyer Eckart Seith and two former employees of Basel-based Bank J. Safra Sarasin, had faced up to 3-1/2 years in prison for numerous charges. Instead, they got suspended fines and jail terms for violating banking secrecy.
“The Zurich District Court condemns three persons, accused of transferring a bank customer list to a German lawyer, for multiple violations of the banking law,” the court said in a statement, adding one banker was also found guilty of industrial espionage and coercion.
The defendants were acquitted of all other charges, the court said.
Seith could not be reached immediately for comment. He told German newspaper FAZ he would lodge an appeal.
The case, in which prosecutors said the accused passed secret Swiss bank documents to German authorities, is linked to the border-crossing fraud investigation into so-called “cum-ex trades” in which financial powerhouses including BlackRock, Spain’s Santander and Deutsche Bank are under scrutiny.
In the 2001-2011 scheme, European governments were duped into believing a stock had multiple owners, each entitled to a dividend and a tax credit. Germany, Denmark, Austria, Belgium and other countries lost tax revenue that instead benefited wealthy investors.
The Zurich trial was linked to German drug chain billionaire Erich Mueller, a Bank Sarasin client who lost around 50 million euros ($56 million) in 2012 on cum-ex trades after German tax officials balked at paying him a tax credit.
Mueller, seeking to recoup his money from Sarasin, hired Seith and worked with the two German bankers, both of whom spent time in investigative custody in Switzerland.
In 2017, a German court ruled Bank Sarasin had to pay 45 million euros to Mueller. Sarasin’s ex-deputy chief executive, Eric Sarasin, in 2016 also paid a settlement in Germany.
Switzerland, the world’s largest offshore wealth center, last year began sharing bank data with many foreign tax authorities, bowing to international pressure to help crack down on tax cheats.
Still, the Zurich case shows the nation continues to move aggressively against people who pass on bank information to foreign individuals or governments.
Meanwhile, German media have celebrated Seith for helping expose the cum-ex scheme.
(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by David Holmes)
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Mar 30, 2019; Aarhus, Denmark; IAAF president Sebastian Coe attends the IAAF World Cross Country Championships at the Moesgaard Museum. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
April 11, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – The world athletics governing body (IAAF) has closed an ethics investigation into its president Sebastian Coe over allegations that he provided misleading answers to a British parliamentary committee in 2015.
The IAAF’s ethics board said, following a six-month investigation, that it had found there was no basis on which “any disciplinary case could be established that Lord Coe intentionally misled the Parliamentary Committee.”
“The investigation has therefore not identified evidence of a potential breach of the code of ethics by Lord Coe,” it said.
Coe has denied throughout that he misled the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) select committee when he appeared before it in December 2015, four months after being elected IAAF president.
Coe, previously an IAAF vice-president, was questioned about what he knew about doping in Russian athletics before he took office. In its final report ‘Combating doping in sport’ in 2018, the committee criticized Coe’s answers as misleading.
“It stretches credibility to believe that he was not aware, at least in general terms, of the main allegations,” the report added.
The IAAF’s ethics board then opened an investigation in September into whether Coe’s conduct had violated its own regulations.
Coe, a double Olympic 1,500 meters gold medalist, insisted that he did not know the specific detail of an email sent to him by former London Marathon race director David Bedford in 2014.
Bedford said the attachments contained details of how Russian marathon runner Liliya Shobukhova had sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the IAAF to cover up positive doping tests.
Shobukhova was banned for three years and two months, later reduced by seven months for assisting with investigations.
Although Coe confirmed receiving the email, he said he forwarded it to the IAAF ethics board without reading the attachments.
The board said in its decision on Thursday that Coe “behaved appropriately” by referring the matter.
“Coe’s evidence is that his personal assistant forwarded the email with its attachments to the Chairperson of the Ethics Board and that he (Coe) did not read the attachments,” it said.
“The investigation did not find any evidence inconsistent with that position.”
(Writing by Brian Homewood; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
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