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CRIME

Corpse found in garden of Airbnb rental in France

A group of friends who rented a house on Airbnb for a party weekend in a French town discovered the decomposing body of a woman in the garden, police said Sunday.

Published: 28 February 2016 19:41 CET
Corpse found in garden of Airbnb rental in France

“Her body was found at the bottom of the property which opens out into a woods,” a police source said, adding that foul play was suspected.

The house in the town of Palaiseau, 17 kilometres (10 miles) south of Paris, was rented on popular home-sharing website Airbnb by a group of friends who made the grisly find on Saturday.

The woman was found “hunched in a dug-out area, her head against the ground, covered in branches and surrounded by wood stumps”, said the source.

She was dressed, but was not wearing shoes and had a “ring with a large stone” on her finger. No documents which could allow her to be identified were found.

The body's advanced state of decomposition meant it was not possible to determine cause of death, and an autopsy will be carried out, said the source.

The Airbnb renters were being questioned by police on Sunday.

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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