Thanks to a $235 billion money laundering scandal, Danske Bank has become the first company ever chosen for the annual Corrupt Actor of the Year award from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a nonprofit investigative reporting consortium.

The massive money laundering scheme was confirmed in an internal investigative report made public last September. The report was conducted by outside law firm Bruun & Hjejle.

The nonprofit group said last week the judges chose Danske Bank for the award over a record 22 other contenders this year. Nominees included Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been accused of supporting cybercrimes and interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election; U.S. President Donald Trump, whose charitable foundation, family business, and election campaign are embroiled in investigations; and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was implicated in the death and dismemberment of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Kenni Leth, group press officer for Copenhagen-based Danske Bank and head of communications, told Corporate Counsel Monday, “We do not have that much to say to the 'award' as such.”

But Leth did offer this statement: “Danske Bank has a particular responsibility in the joint fight against money laundering and financial crime, but we have failed to live up to this responsibility in this case.”

He added, “We have launched a number of initiatives to prevent anything similar from ever happening again, and we are determined to learn the lessons from this case and share our experiences in a broad and constructive cooperation with all relevant stakeholders.”

Usually the journalism group names an individual as recipient of the award, although it did name an entity, the Romanian Legislature, in 2013 for enacting legislation that decriminalized bribery. The group is an international reporting platform with 46 centers spread around the globe.

The Swedish Development Agency, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Danish government, Luminate, the Open Society Foundations and other major international donors support the group and its offices in Sarajevo, Bucharest, Riga, Tbilisi and Washington, D.C.

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project co-founder and editor Drew Sullivan said in a statement, “Danske Bank is a worthy recipient of this prize. It highlights the role of the criminal services industry in enabling international corruption and crime.”

The statement said the term “criminal services” refers to the banks, law firms, registration agents, accountants and others who help criminals and corrupt officials hide their assets and legitimize their operations.

“In the past 20 years, they've globalized organized crime and autocracy and helped everyone from Mexican drug cartels to Russian President Vladimir Putin to terrorists, autocrats, and almost every global threat,” added Sullivan, who was one of nine judges who made the selection from nominations submitted by journalists and the public.

The jury settled on Danske Bank for the role its Estonian branch played in allegedly allowing billions of dollars to be laundered over the past decade, while supervisors in Copenhagen failed to ensure the bank's compliance with Danish anti-money laundering laws.

Another judge, South African anti-corruption activist Hennie van Vuuren, said in the statement that it's “high time that we focus on the enablers” and not just the corrupt individual politicians.

Van Vuuren added that Danske Bank “ran a money laundering enterprise on such a massive scale that it startled most of us. And yes, it should shake the anti-corruption 'community' to its roots that the bank is based in Denmark — a country that Transparency International has consistently labeled as amongst the top three 'least corrupt' [countries] for more than two decades.”

On Nov. 28 the Danish state prosecutor charged Danske Bank with four counts of violating the Danish Anti-Money Laundering Act. The bank declined comment on the charges. Prosecutors in the U.K., France and the U.S. are still investigating the scandal. The bank has said it is cooperating with the investigations.

Leth, the bank's spokesman, said as a general rule the bank does not disclose the names of outside counsel representing it in such probes.

Last fall Danske Bank replaced its CEO and chief financial officer. In December it replaced its chairman of the board as well as the chairman of the board's auditing committee.