Do you have a Danish bank account somewhere which you’ve forgotten about? The tax agency is currently looking for the owners of almost 6,000 accounts with a combined balance of DKK 55 million.
Occasionally, it’s so difficult to figure out who the owner of a bank account or share portfolio is that Danish banks eventually have to give up looking.
In the past year, a total of 5,726 bank accounts and 61 share portfolios have been closed for that reason at 13 different banks, meaning that banks are holding on to 55 million kroner of unclaimed cash. That’s according to a press release by the Danish tax agency, The Tax Agency.
One of the accounts has a balance of DKK 400,000.
Banks have now passed on the details of these accounts to the tax agency, which has taken over the job of trying to match the money with its owners.
The agency has published a list of all the accounts in question, which have been frozen for a year in an attempt to get the owners to identify themselves.
“Banks and their customers have a shared responsibility for registering accounts with the correct details,” the agency’s assistant director Ulrick Junge said in a statement.
“If that doesn’t happen, then the worst case scenario is that the money is transferred to the state. No one wants that to happen and that’s why we’re asking the public for help: If you’re on the list or you know someone who is, then it’s time to contact your bank.”
The accounts will remain frozen for another year, until April 28th, 2027.
“Typically these are forgotten accounts, or a customer moving abroad who hasn’t informed their bank. But there are some accounts with quite a large amount of money to forget about, so we can’t rule out the possibility that there are other motivations behind this,” Junge said.
“It could be the underground economy or money laundering. That’s why the banks and the tax agency need to know who owns the money.”
The tax agency reveals a similar list of unclaimed accounts each year. In 2024, it attempted to find the owners of 17.5 million kroner spread across 7,720 bank accounts and 188 stock portfolios, with 12 million kroner eventually being transferred to the state.
The deadline for the 2025 list is on Thursday, so the final figures from last year have not been published.
