The dirty money scandals pouring out of Europe may seem like deja vu. A crackdown on illicit cash made a big splash in the first half of this decade: HSBC Holdings Plc was fined $1.9 billion in 2012 for handling funds from drug traffickers, terror groups, and Washington-sanctioned nations such as Iran; in 2014, BNP Paribas SA had to pay almost $9 billion for dealing with Iran and other countries deemed pariahs by the U.S., such as Cuba and Sudan; and in 2015, Commerzbank AG had to hand over $1.45 billion in fines to U.S. regulators for processing transactions with some of those same countries. It's practically taken for granted that there's always someone somewhere trying to make ill-gotten wealth look innocent by sneaking it through legitimate companies and banks. So why should it be such a shock that a bunch of Nordic banks appear to have been caught handling suspicious Russian money?
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