The following is an excerpt from Danske Bank Denmark’s general business procedures on money laundering.
Definition
Money laundering means all actions intended to change the character of the source of money from an illegal (a violation of criminal law) to a legal source.
Types of crime
A transaction will be considered a money laundering transaction if the funds in question originate from a criminal offence, for instance:
- illegal narcotics trading
- theft
- embezzlement
- fraud
- fraud committed by an agent against his or her principal
- extortion
- robbery
- receiving stolen goods
- tax fraud
- bribery
- market manipulation
- non-compliance with insider prohibition rules
Note: It is not the responsibility of Danske Bank to assess what criminal actions are involved.
Danske Bank’s statutory obligations
Danske Bank must
- verify a customer’s true identity
- obtain information about the purpose and scope of the individual customer relationship
- be aware of atypical transactions
- investigate suspicious transactions
- inform the police if the suspicion proves well-founded.
Danske Bank must ensure that employees have the necessary background to recognise actions that could be related to money laundering.
The Danish Bankers Association has produced a videotape with examples of money laundering suspicions.
Copies of the videotape are kept at finance centres.
Staff obligations
As an employee, you must
- identify the customer and ask about his or her purpose and, for new customers, the expected business volume
- investigate conditions involving suspicious transactions, including transactions involving cash deposits and withdrawals
- report any suspicion of money laundering and terrorism funds to your manager or your manager's deputy.
Consequences of passing on informationPassing on information to the police in good faith does not constitute any breach of the confidentiality rules
- applying across the Group
- described in the Danish Financial Business Act.
Persons who arouse such suspicions may not file any type of civil or criminal charges against employees or Danske Bank for having passed on such information to the police in good faith. This is the case even if a suspicion proves to be unfounded.
Receiving stolen goods
A person is guilty of receiving stolen goods if he or she unlawfully accepts or acquires for him or herself or for others a share of profits obtained as a result of a punishable offence, or if he or she unlawfully, by concealing, keeping, transporting or assisting in the disposal of such goods or by any other action, subsequently collaborates in securing the profits of a punishable offence for the benefit of another person.
There is a certain connection between the provisions on receiving stolen goods and the money laundering rules to be observed by Danske Bank staff if they suspect that funds originate from a criminal offence.
If an employee accepts money suspected to originate from a criminal offence and deposits the money into the individual customer’s account, for instance, and subsequently informs the police of his or her suspicion or looks into the customer’s payment transactions for a given period as part of a money laundering examination, the employee will not be guilty of receiving stolen goods. Receiving funds in such situations is not “unlawful”.
In Danske Bank, the individual employee (at the cash desk) will not contact the police, but must notify his or her superior of the suspicion. If the suspicion cannot be dismissed, Group Anti-Money Laundering must be notified of the money laundering suspicion.
The procedural history of the Danish Money Laundering Act describes such situations in this way: “To a financial services sector employee who becomes suspicious of money laundering – and who must typically report suspicions to his or her superior and is generally not responsible for assessing the requirements of the Act – the requirement stipulating that actions must be unlawful for a person to be considered guilty of an offence means that the employee cannot be found guilty of receiving stolen goods if he or she has performed the relevant duties as described in the internal rules drawn up according to the Money Laundering Act.”
Last updated/revised on October 12, 2007