The Honey TrapSwedbank, Russia and the World's Biggest Money Laundering Scheme

Lars Berge, Axel Gordh Humlesjö

In the spring of 2020, a cell phone is buzzing at the editorial office of Mission Investigate in Stockholm. A year has passed since their team at Swedish Television exposed a money laundering scandal at Swedbank. Now, an intelligence source has additional sensitive information to pass on. The Russian security service has had access to kompromat against the bank’s top management, the source claims. It all started when a senior executive bought sex from a high-end prostitute at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow.

Journalists Lars Berge and Axel Gordh Humlesjö have spent more than four years examining what went on behind the scenes at one of the largest banks in the Nordic countries. Events that those responsible did everything in their power to try to hide. It is a story of espionage, money laundering at an unfathomable scale, and Russian imperialism. The shocking realization is that Swedbank – the most ‘Swedish’ of all banks – was exploited by the FSB as a part of Vladimir Putin’s warfare against the West.

This book unveils how it all happened.

‘A fantastic, page-turning book about how Russian intelligence infiltrated Sweden’s biggest bank and used it as a vehicle for money laundering. It is one of the most gripping spy adventures I’ve read, even more so because it’s real. The characters are very well described and most importantly, the book gets to the heart of how our financial system has been corrupted by Russian intelligence.’

– Catherine Belton, Washington Post, author of Putin’s People