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CRIME

Police ‘arrest two’ over Paris Kurdish murders

French police have detained two people for questioning in connection with the killings of three female Kurdish activists in Paris last week, a judicial source said on Friday.

Published: 18 January 2013 19:22 CET

The two were arrested during the day on Thursday, the source said, the same day thousands of Kurds gathered in Turkey's southeastern city of Diyarbakir
for the funerals of the three activists.

The source provided no details on the reasons the two people were detained or what role, if any, they are suspected of having played in the killings.

The three women, one of them 55-year-old Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), were found shot execution-style at a Kurdish centre in Paris on January 10.

The Paris killings came amid nascent peace talks between Turkish secret services and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan with the aim of disarming the group, branded as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community.

The PKK took up arms for self-rule in the Kurdish-majority southeast in a conflict that has claimed 45,000 lives, mostly Kurds.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has speculated the killings could be the result of an "internal feud" within the PKK aimed at sabotaging the talks, recalling that the separatist group has carried out similar
executions in the past.

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BANKING

Danish bank to pay millions to end French laundering probe

Denmark’s largest bank has agreed to pay a multi-million sum to end legal pursuits in France linked to alleged money laundering in its Estonian subsidiary that resulted in heavy US penalties

Published: 18 September 2024 16:27 CEST
Danish bank to pay millions to end French laundering probe

Danske Bank will pay €6.3million (47million kroner) to end French financial authorities’ investigation.

An independent auditor’s report published in 2018 alleged Danske Bank’s Estonian unit allegedly laundered some €200billion through 15,000 accounts from 2007 to 2015.

The payment was agreed on August 27th with France’s national financial crime prosecutors and validated by a court on Wednesday. The agreement does not involve any admission of guilt.

Danske last December pleaded guilty in the United States and paid a $2billion fine.

The bank last October set aside an amount roughly equal to its US fine in expectation of legal pursuits in several countries.

Probes are underway in Estonia, Denmark, and Britain.

France charged Danske in 2019 with organised money laundering, which it denied, saying it was unaware of its Estonian subsidiary’s activities.

Tracfin, the French finance ministry’s anti-money laundering unit, found suspect movements on two accounts linked to a Franco-Russian businesswoman who has since been handed a two-year suspended sentence.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Danske’s counsel Niels Heering said his institution was “happy to reach this accord which for us is a way to close this chapter”, adding that “cracking down on financial fraud remains a priority” for the bank.

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