A series of major scandals in Denmark is testing its status as one of the world’s least corrupt nations, with Transparency International warning that its image may now be at risk.
The Scandinavian nation known for its love of bikes, equality and welfare has more recently been associated with money laundering, tax evasion and embezzlement. The development should force Danes to review their assumptions about how honest their country is, according to Jesper Olsen, the deputy chairman of Transparency International in Denmark.
The scandals, including laundering allegations against Danske Bank A/S, “make people look at Denmark in a different light,” said Olsen.
Margrethe Vestager, a former Danish minister who is now the European Union’s competition commissioner, said her colleagues in Brussels are closely following the scandal engulfing Denmark’s biggest bank.
“The Danske Bank case really gets a tremendous amount of attention because money laundering is such an extremely serious matter and the scope is incomprehensibly huge,” she said in Copenhagen on Friday.
According to the latest ranking, which is for 2017, Denmark is the world’s least corrupt country after New Zealand. Transparency International bases its reports on surveys of other countries’ perceptions and that methodology means it’s still “too early to say” whether the Danske laundromat case will affect Denmark’s status, Olsen said.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.