Money laundering means securing the proceeds of criminal activity and integrating this money into the legal economy. The purpose is to make it look as if the proceeds have been earned legally, and to hide the fact that they have been generated by criminal activity.
In DNB, there are over 400 people working to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. These people include computer specialists, banking specialists, intelligence analysts and experienced investigators. A number of major projects have been carried out in recent years to strengthen DNB’s anti-money laundering efforts.
Every single day, more than seven million transactions are made to and from accounts in DNB and millions of transactions are screened through our electronic monitoring system, which detects irregular transactions. If our systems and manual routines identify payments that we are unable to explain, we will initiate an internal investigation. We have a low threshold for reporting suspicious transactions to Økokrim (the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime). In 2019, we investigated more than 5 000 matters that could indicate money laundering and sent more than 1 800 reports to Økokrim. It is Økokrim that investigates whether or not something is illegal.