NORDEA BANK OSLO (Reuters) - The newly appointed head of the board at state-controlled Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor (>> Telenor ASA) is to face questions from a company committee following the leak of the Panama Papers documents.
Gunn Waersted will be asked about her previous role as head of wealth management at top Nordic bank Nordea (>> Nordea Bank AB), Norway's Trade and Industry Ministry said in a statement. The ministry is Telenor's largest shareholder with a stake of 54 percent.
The questioning will be handled by Telenor's four-person nomination committee, which is in charge of proposing and vetting candidates to the company's board. The committee can recommend appointments or removals of board members, which are voted on by the company's supervisory board.
On Monday, Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority said it had contacted the authorities in Luxembourg for information related to allegations that Nordea helped some clients set up accounts in offshore tax havens.
The allegations appeared in a leak of more than 11.5 million documents from the files of law firm Mossack Fonseca, based in Panama. Nordea said on Tuesday it would end its relationship with the law firm.
Waersted was appointed to lead Telenor's board last December and resigned from Nordea shortly afterwards, although she will remain an adviser to the bank until the end of April.
Nomination committee head Anders Skjaevestad, Waersted and Telenor did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.
Waersted was appointed with a mandate to reform Telenor in response to its handling of investments in affiliate Vimpelcom (>> VimpelCom Ltd (ADR)) which recently agreed to pay $795 million (562 million pounds) to settle U.S. and Dutch probes into a bribery scheme in Uzbekistan.
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Keith Weir)
