Howard Wilkinson, Danske Bank Whistleblower, at the 31st Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00And really, that's where the story
2. 0:01should have ended. You should never
3. 0:03really have heard of me.
4. 0:04Something bad had happened in the
5. 0:05branch, and we all know bad things
6. 0:08happen. A whistleblower had reported it,
7. 0:10internal audit had investigated it,
8. 0:13reported it to top management, and top
9. 0:15management had taken the necessary
10. 0:16action, made the necessary reports, done
11. 0:19what needed to be done.
12. 0:21You'd never heard of me.
13. 0:24It didn't happen like that. The problem
14. 0:26was that top management failed to step
15. 0:28up to the plate. Even though by now two
16. 0:30executive board members were involved.
17. 0:33By April 2014, I'd had enough, so I
18. 0:35resigned, and I wrote to the four people
19. 0:37who got my original whistleblowing
20. 0:39report,
21. 0:40noting that there'd been a lack of
22. 0:42action, and I warned that I might report
23. 0:44the bank to the authorities.
24. 0:46I guess they thought I was bluffing.
25. 0:48Maybe not. Anyway, when I left, I was
26. 0:51presented with an agreement which had a
27. 0:52very strict non-disclosure clause, an
28. 0:55NDA.
29. 0:56Perhaps not not one that necessarily had
30. 0:58any legal force, but it was very strict
31. 1:00anyway. We parted ways, and I never
32. 1:03heard from them again.
33. 1:04Until 2017,
34. 1:07when newspapers started to write about
35. 1:09various money laundering stories and
36. 1:11about Danske Estonia. First of all, we
37. 1:13had the global laundromat.
38. 1:16Then in September 2017, we had the
39. 1:18Azerbaijani laundromat. This was
40. 1:21specifically about four clients of
41. 1:23Danske Estonia who helped route a couple
42. 1:25of billion dollars out of Azerbaijan. In
43. 1:28fact, one of these four clients was one
44. 1:30that I had made a whistleblowing report
45. 1:32about back in 2014. That was then 3
46. 1:34years 3 years earlier.
47. 1:36Under pressure from the media in
48. 1:38Denmark, the bank commissioned a firm of
49. 1:40Danish lawyers to start an
50. 1:42investigation.
51. 1:44In November 2017, the bank slipped out
52. 1:47that there'd been a warning from a
53. 1:48whistleblower,
54. 1:49and that really started things rolling.
55. 1:52In early 2018, journalists had tracked
56. 1:54me down
57. 1:56and started to ask questions. Although
58. 1:58these journalists did actually respect
59. 2:00my confidentiality and they didn't print
60. 2:02my name.
61. 2:04In September 2018, the Danish lawyers
62. 2:07reported and we got this crazy number.
63. 2:09We got this number of 230 billion
64. 2:12dollars of cash moving through Danske
65. 2:15Estonia, the majority of which they said
66. 2:17was suspicious.
67. 2:19And the report described in some detail
68. 2:21the warnings I'd given back in 2014 and
69. 2:23how they'd been ignored.
70. 2:26Later that month, unknown to me, an
71. 2:28Estonian magazine chose to to actually
72. 2:31publicly name me and start writing about
73. 2:33me. And they quoted four unnamed bank
74. 2:36sources.
75. 2:37And that really started a circus. Um
76. 2:40ultimately, I testified before a Danish
77. 2:43parliamentary committee and also a
78. 2:45committee of the European Parliament.
79. 2:47That was both in November 2018.
80. 2:50By then, authorities were reported to be
81. 2:53active. The bank said to them that it
82. 2:55was under investigation by the DOJ and
83. 2:57SEC in the US
84. 2:59and by Danish, Estonian, and French
85. 3:01prosecutors.
86. 3:03The Estonian authorities arrested 12
87. 3:05former managers and employees of the
88. 3:07Estonian branch and the Danish
89. 3:09prosecutor preliminarily charged the
90. 3:12bank and also primarily charged
91. 3:15the former CEO, the former CFO, the
92. 3:17former chief risk officer,
93. 3:19the former head of business banking, so
94. 3:21those were four executive board members.
95. 3:23On top of that, the former general
96. 3:25counsel and a number of other top
97. 3:27executives, some of whom have managed to
98. 3:29keep their names secret so far.
99. 3:32Um
100. 3:33we've also seen in the last year
101. 3:34shareholder lawsuits being filed in the
102. 3:36US and Denmark.
103. 3:38And the case has put a lot of focus on
104. 3:40the roles both of US correspondent banks
105. 3:43and particularly on the roles of
106. 3:45regulators.
107. 3:47Since my testimony in Brussels,
108. 3:49a whistleblower A has come into force in
109. 3:51the European Union. And this will for
110. 3:53the first time give whistleblowers in
111. 3:55the EU a uniform minimum level of
112. 3:57protection. It will also outlaw the sort
113. 3:59of NDA that I was presented with.