Defenders of Danish workers’ rights today said they may sue giant Northern European bank, Nordea, for allegedly enacting a company policy which forbids its employees from owning or trading in Bitcoin or other Cryptocurrencies .
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This decision from the Nordic region’s biggest bank did not go over well with the local community, as the hands-off approach was not complying with primary rights and labor standards, some activists claim,
Danish Financial Federation chairman Kent Petersen told a local radio station that his association “would consider it a legal offense against the individual,” adding that “After all, in Denmark there is still a degree of freedom to invest if it is not a risk for the company you are employed in.”
More recently, Nordea’s CEO Casper von Koskull dismissed Bitcoin altogether, calling it “a joke”. In his criticism of Bitcoin, von Koskull specifically targeted the fact that the cryptocurrency is unregulated and frequently linked with criminal activity and fraud. He added that he’s skeptical that authorities will allow a currency to exist without state oversight, especially if something goes wrong.
The Nordic lender made the official announcement that has forbidden all its roughly 31,000 employees from trading in cryptocurrencies in a post on social media. In a tweet, the bank wrote: “Nordea Financial institution forbids all their workers (at the least in Sweden) to cease proudly owning and buying and selling $btc and different crypto foreign money. Is it authorized even?”
The message also clarified that the new policy will apply to all employees of the bank, including secretaries, cleaners, IT staff, and of course bank personnel.
Nordea’s decision to ban Bitcoin trading for its employees comes as Nordic financial regularors are grappling with how to regulate the digital coin space. The Danish central bank calls it dangerous, while the governor of its Swedish counterpart thinks that Bitcoin is just a speculative virtual asset whose value has no guarantee.
