Danish PM feels ‘let down’ over banks’ performance

Bloomberg

Denmark’s prime minister says he feels “deceived” and “let down” after backing free-market policies that helped make life easier for a financial industry now mired in scandal. Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who leads a center-right coalition, told lawmakers in the Danish parliament that his country’s banks “didn’t behave at all,” leaving him feeling “completely let down.”
Denmark is trying to come to terms with the fact that its biggest bank is now the poster child of one of Europe’s worst ever money laundering scandals. Rasmussen has previously warned that the Danske Bank A/S dirty money saga risks tainting the image of a country that’s generally been associated with low levels of corruption and high levels of transparency.
“Obviously this is a failure,” Rasmussen said. “This requires action.” “As someone who truly believes in the market economy and the free market, I feel I’ve been deceived,” Rasmussen said.
Danske is now the subject of multiple criminal investigations, including in the US, after admitting that much of about $230 billion that flowed through a tiny Estonian unit may have been suspicious in origin.
The case has ended the careers of the bank’s top executive and chairman and wiped about $15 billion off its market value this year.
Rasmussen leads a government that, before the Danske scandal, had sought to lighten the burden of financial regulation on banks. But as the laundering case balloons, lawma- kers are doing a U-turn.