The Nordic bank has appointed a chief compliance officer at a time when banks in the region are battling against a number money laundering issues.

An earlier version of this story, by Chris Hamblin, was published on Friday by Compliance Matters, sister news service to this one. To register for Compliance Matters, see here.

Nordea, the largest bank in Scandinavia whose headquarters are in Helsinki, has chosen Helene Jepson to become its next chief compliance officer and head of group compliance.

Jepson will start the job on 1st September and will report to Matthew Elderfield, Nordea's chief risk officer and head of its risk and compliance department. For some time now, the bank has been trying to build up a good compliance function as a strategic priority.

She has worked in compliance in a number of international banks and at the same time has a solid Nordic and legal background, all of which gave her "the right background," according to Elderfield. At present she is the enterprise chief compliance officer of First Republic Bank in San Francisco, where she is responsible for all of the bank's compliance.

Her skills will be needed. The bank has been hiring compliance staff by the hundreds in an attempt to prove to its regulators all over Scandinavia that its involvement in the Danske Bank scandal is 'historic.' Last month its CEO told a press conference that "we are likely to receive fines" and it made a €95 million ($106.45 million) provision in its first-quarter report for the possibility of a money-laundering fine at the hands of Danish regulators.

Nordea has had one piece of recent good news, however: its home National Bureau of Investigation has, very patriotically, declined to investigate claims regarding money laundering that financier and activist Bill Browder has levelled at it. In his request for an investigation, which he submitted to Finland's prosecutor-general last year, he claimed that some 527 Nordea accounts had been involved in money laundering rackets. In a previous report he alleged that the bank had washed some €175 millions' worth of dirty Baltic money. Nordea moved its headquarters from Sweden to Finland in October last year.