EU Officials Check Out Bankers' Histories
The European Banking Authority is investigating whether the director of Nordea Estonia, Vahur Kraft, and two other managers are legally suitable for their current positions in light of their past involvement with falsified documents.
The basis of the investigation is a banking law that provides that managing bankers must hold a clean business record. EU officials are now deciding whether the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority should evaluate Kraft's suitability, reported Eesti Ekspress.
It was revealed late last year that, as acting governor of the Bank of Estonia in 1995, Kraft signed a falsified document connected to Estonian assets in Russia. After remaining veiled for years, the VEB fund case, as it's known, which also has connections to European Commissioner Siim Kallas, is now being revisited as investigations by the Estonian Parliament and National Audit Office continue.
The other two Nordea executives being screened presented false information to Harju County Court in 2011 in a seizure of assets case.
The party demanding that the bankers be sacked is an Estonian company, SV Capital, owned by Juri Džeksenev and Vjatšeslav Šuljakov. A few years ago, that company transferred large sums of money from Russia that were exchanged from rubles to euros and then transported back to Russia in cash. Police investigated the scheme for four years before closing the case in 2010.