This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The internal whistleblower who helped reveal alleged money laundering at Danske Bank’s Estonian branch was reportedly a British former head of its trading business in the Baltics.

Howard Wilkinson headed the bank’s Danske Markets trading unit in the Baltics from 2007 to 2014 and confirmed his role in an email to Danish newspaper Berlingske, after he was named by Estonian media.

Berlingske has published a series of revelations in the developing Danske Bank scandal, which may prove to be the largest money-laundering operation in history.

Is money-laundering scandal at Danske Bank the largest in history? Read more

Danske Bank’s chief executive, Thomas Borgen, resigned last week after an inquiry revealed that €200bn of payments, many of which the bank said were suspicious, had been moved through its Estonian branch over a period of eight years.

“I can confirm that I worked as head of markets in the Baltics based in Tallinn from 2007 until my last working day in April 2014, just four months after my first whistleblower report to the top management in Copenhagen,” the newspaper reported Wilkinson as saying in the email.

Reuters has been unable to contact Wilkinson while Danske Bank declined to comment on Wednesday.

Wilkinson warned Danske Bank’s executive board in Copenhagen in 2013 and 2014 about suspicious activities at the Estonian branch, reported Berlingske, which said it has been in contact with him for months.

Last week the bank said an independent investigation had found “a series of major deficiencies” in its controls to prevent money laundering. The investigation found that more than half of Danske’s 15,000 customers in Estonia were suspicious.

“We have gone through 6,200 customers starting with the customers hitting most risk indicators first,” the bank said. “Almost all of these customers have been reported to the authorities.”

The investigation found that several dozen of its employees might have colluded with customers to get around background and security checks. The bank said it had reported some of its employees and former employees to the Estonian police.

Borgen, who was in charge of Danske’s international operations (including Estonia) before he became CEO in 2013, had previously dismissed other executives’ concerns about Russian transactions in Estonia. In a 2010 investigation Borgen said he had not “come across anything that could give rise to concern”.

The independent report by the Danish law firm Bruun & Hjejle, published last week, found that under Borgen’s leadership the Estonian branch had failed to disclose the full situation to Danske’s board.

Borgen said when he resigned that the law firm had not found him to have breached the law.