Hammarby sponsor Revolut's accounts used in Russian-organised laundering scheme

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Banken Revolut är baserad i Storbritannien och är en så kallad neobank, som bara har internetbaserad verksamhet och inga fysiska bankkontor. Foto: Fernando Gutierrez-Juarez/TT Foto: Fernando Gutierrez-Juarez/TT

Revolut syns på både Hammarbys dam- och herrlags tröjor. Foto: Kenta Jönsson/Bildbyrån Foto: Kenta Jönsson/Bildbyrån

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Accounts at Revolut recur in the money-laundering scheme that Sweden's financial police set out in a new report: large-scale laundering and tax evasion with a base in Russian organised crime, in which suspected transactions worth 2.9 billion kronor have been analysed. Revolut is also the main sponsor of the football club Hammarby. The bank's name sits on the shirts of both the men's and the women's teams, under a partnership presented in March as "one of the largest and most important commercial agreements in the club's history".

The scheme's purpose, Finanspolisen writes, is to let companies pay undeclared wages in cash. A company that wants wages paid under the table receives a fabricated invoice from a so-called slussbolag — a flow-through company — pays it although no service has been performed, and receives the money back in cash. Nearly a fifth of the analysed transactions went to bank accounts abroad, with Lithuania, Poland, Ireland and the United Kingdom as the largest recipient countries, while 75 percent took place in Sweden. Transfers to Lithuania and Ireland often run through accounts at Revolut, and criminals, Finanspolisen notes, exchange money into cryptocurrency via banks like it, which makes the funds harder to trace.

Hammarby's sales manager, Tomas Lindgren, told the trade site Idrottsbranschen that the club views the matter as "extremely serious". He acted immediately, he says: he contacted Revolut and held a department meeting with them. The club has met the people who hold that responsibility in Sweden, with training and follow-up on the money, and Revolut could demonstrate, in documents and in organisation, how it works against laundering. Banking licences in France and England, Lindgren notes, cannot be obtained without functioning, active work against money laundering — so it is, in his words, "not just a paper or desk product". The cooperation is unaffected for the moment, though the dialogue has intensified, and the connection to crime, he says, is not good for the brand.

Last year the Lithuanian central bank fined Revolut 3.5 million euros for deficient anti-money-laundering work. In an email to DN, the bank — a UK-based neobank without physical branches — replied that it is not accused of any crime in the report and that the report does not connect Revolut to Russia. It holds, the bank writes, zero tolerance for financial crime, operates under the direct supervision of the European Central Bank, carries the same obligations as all other financial institutions operating in Sweden, closes accounts linked to criminal activity proactively, and reports suspicious activity to the authorities — information it says is also shared with Swedish law enforcement. Money laundering, Revolut writes, is a challenge for the entire financial ecosystem.