Investigators from the German Federal Criminal Police Office and the financial watchdog Bafin raided the Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt on Friday. The searches are linked to reports of money laundering suspicions, a bank spokesperson told the newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung†
“It is an investigative measure by the Public Prosecution Service (OM) in Frankfurt in connection with reports of suspicions of money laundering that the bank has submitted. Deutsche Bank is fully cooperating with the authorities,” the spokesperson said. The German financial markets regulator (Bafin) declined to comment, according to the newspaper. Due to the ‘ongoing investigative measures’, the Public Prosecution Service does not want to provide any explanation, but does want to say that the operation is taking place on the basis of a search warrant from the court in Frankfurt.
According to business newspaper Handelsblatt The investigators suspect Deutsche Bank of late filing reports of money laundering suspicions. The background would be a transaction involving a so-called ‘correspondent bank’, a credit institution abroad with which a domestic bank cooperates for the processing of transactions in international payments.
Deutsche Bank did not report a suspicious transaction years ago, while there were suspicions whether suspicious persons were involved, someone familiar with the case told the German business newspaper. The bank recently forwarded the information to the authorities, but in their opinion this notification came too late. According to the insider, the allegations are directed against unknown persons.
Another source related to the investigation speaks to the newspaper of an isolated case from the customer sphere. According to that insider, it is not about allegations in the context of the CumEx scandal (dividend tax fraud) nor about ‘greenwashing’ (appearing to be more socially responsible than in reality).
Deutsche Bank does not want to comment on the information, according to the newspaper. After news of the searches, the bank’s shares came under pressure. The profit of 2.8 percent made earlier today turned into red numbers. With a loss of more than three percent, Deutsche Bank shares were among the biggest losers in the Deutscher Aktienindex, better known as the Dax, the stock index of German listed companies, according to German media on Friday afternoon.
Panama Papers
This is not the first time that searches have taken place at the Deutsche Bank headquarters. This already happened in 2018 and 2019. Then it was about an investigation into the support of customers in tax havens by bank employees. Information about this came to light in 2015 thanks to the so-called Panama Papers. Confidential information belonging to Panamanian offshore service provider Mossack Fonseca was leaked.
The OM in Frankfurt concluded after an investigation that Deutsche Bank had reported money laundering suspicions too late. In addition, the management had failed to fulfill its supervisory obligation and from 2015 to 2018 the bank was insufficiently staffed to combat money laundering. On the basis of this, the judiciary imposed fines on the bank for a total amount of 15 million euros. According to a OM spokeswoman, Deutsche Bank had cooperated well and closely with the authorities and the investigation was therefore completed earlier than expected.
Bank spokesman Jörg Eigendorf stated at the time that with the completion of the case it was ‘clear’ that the Public Prosecution Service had not established ‘criminally relevant misconduct’ of bank employees. Shortcomings in internal control were subsequently identified and remedied. Since 2015, the number of employees of the Financial Crime Department has more than tripled. In addition, Deutsche Bank invested 700 million euros in new software for control functions.
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