https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/danske-bank-money-laundering-europe-biggest-scandal-181011143209065.html

Danske Bank, Denmark's largest lender, has found itself at the centre of one of the world's biggest money-laundering scandals.

EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova has described the $235bn of suspicious transactions as "the biggest scandal we have now in Europe".

The bank is under investigation on both sides of the Atlantic for allegedly funneling billions of dollars in illicit wealth through its Estonian branch, which it acquired in 2006.

From then until 2015, some 200bn euro ($235bn) in suspicious transactions passedthrough the branch.

The massive sum - 10 times Estonia's Gross Domestic Product - was paid in by non-residents, with most deposits coming from Russia.

The story broke in March 2017, after the Estonian branch was mentioned by Danish newspaper Berlingske in connection with the Russia and Azerbaijani Laundromat money laundering operations.

Initially, the sum allegedly laundered was thought to amount to around $2bn, however following investigations by Denmark's Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA), and Danske Bank itself, the figure was realised to be $235bn.

"Experts have been talking about the largest ever money laundering scandal in history, but we still don't have a full picture," Maira Martini, knowledge coordinator at anti-corruption NGO Transparency International, told Al Jazeera. "We know for sure that we are not talking about a few bad apples."

Danske Bank's report, released in September 2018, said the accounts of some 15,000 non-resident customers were being investigated.

Of the 6,200 accounts examined at the time of the report's publication, the "vast majority" were considered "suspicious".

"It turned out that this was so much bigger than anyone had ever imagined," said David Bentow, the editor of Finanswatch, a Danish financial news website. "The report was really a bombshell".

Warnings from authorities in Estonia and Russia as early as 2007, about suspicious activities in the Estonian branch were apparently ignored, while internal mismanagement allowed the branch to effectively operate under a different set of standards to others in the Danske Bank group.

The Danish press also reported that a whistle-blower inside the bank alerted management to the trouble in the Estonian branch around 2012, but this was also apparently ignored.

"Not only did Danske Bank not look carefully enough at this, they were actually aware that there were a lot of suspicious transactions, but they consciously and deliberately chose to look the other way because it was very profitable to manage these types of transactions," Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Washington, DC-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Al Jazeera.

Non-resident accounts made up the lion's share of the branch's profits, according to the internal report, with 99 percent coming from clients outside Estonia in 2013.

"There are many reasons to be concerned," said Martini. "By enabling or falling to crack down on money laundering, financial institutions and governments are also enabling predicate criminal activities. If a corrupt individual cannot hide illicit funds and cannot spend the money without raising suspicious then stealing public funds also becomes for difficult," she told Al Jazeera.