STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedbank (ST:SWEDa) elected former Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson as chairman on Wednesday as the bank scrambles to regain confidence from both markets and the public after a major money-laundering scandal.
Persson, a Social Democrat, served as prime minister for a decade until 2006. He has since then served as board member in several companies, including bank Alandsbanken. He was voted in at an extraordinary general meeting.
Swedbank, Sweden's oldest retail bank, parted ways with its chief executive and chairman earlier this year after being drawn into a money laundering scandal at Danske Bank (CO:DANSKE), and is being investigated in the United States, Sweden and the Baltics.
The most recent allegations, reported by Swedish state TV in March, said that Swedbank processed gross transactions of up to 20 billion euros ($22.4 billion) a year from high-risk, mostly Russian non-resident clients, through Estonia from 2010 to 2016.