Swedbank has consented to a $50 million penalty from New York state's financial oversight body to resolve a money laundering investigation connected to the Panama Papers.

The Swedish banking group finalized this agreement with the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), which initiated its inquiry back in 2019.

The examination focused on the bank's measures against money laundering and terrorism financing, along with its communications to regulators from 2007 through 2019, as noted in a Swedbank announcement.

DFS charged Swedbank with concealing details and providing misleading responses during the inquiry into connections with the Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca.

The Panama Papers emerged in 2016 from an international reporting effort by ICIJ and Suddeutsche Zeitung, drawing on extensive leaked files from Mossack Fonseca. These files indicated that clients of Swedbank's Estonian branch had engaged Mossack Fonseca for registration services.

In the following three years, reporters from ICIJ's Swedish collaborator SVT disclosed that Swedbank possibly concealed data from American officials regarding questionable transactions, despite the bank's assertions to the contrary.

After the Panama Papers release in 2016, DFS issued two requests for information from Swedbank concerning its links to Mossack Fonseca, associated banks, entities, and persons, per the latest announcement. Regulators determined that the bank did not disclose these connections, did not mention European regulatory investigations, and omitted details about its operations in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

"Critically, the leak shed light on the failure of global financial institutions to follow legal requirements designed to ensure that their customers are not engaged in or facilitating fraud, money laundering, or other criminal acts," the consent order reads.