Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts

Authored by nytimes.com and submitted by slakmehl

Kerrie McHugh, a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman, said the company had intensified its efforts to combat financial crime. An effective anti-money laundering program, she said, “requires sophisticated transaction screening technology as well as a trained group of individuals who can analyze the alerts generated by that technology both thoroughly and efficiently.”

“At no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious,” she added. “Furthermore, the suggestion that anyone was reassigned or fired in an effort to quash concerns relating to any client is categorically false.”

Amanda Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, the umbrella company for the Trump family’s many business interests, said: “We have no knowledge of any ‘flagged’ transactions with Deutsche Bank.” She said the Trump Organization currently has “no operating accounts with Deutsche Bank.” She did not respond when asked if other Trump entities had accounts.

Karen Zabarsky, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, said: “Any allegations regarding Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Kushner Companies which involved money laundering is completely made up and totally false. The New York Times continues to create dots that just don’t connect.”

Deutsche Bank’s decision not to report the transactions is the latest twist in Mr. Trump’s long, complicated relationship with the German bank — the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with the real estate developer.

Congressional and state authorities are investigating that relationship and have demanded the bank’s records related to the president, his family and their companies. Subpoenas from two House committees seek, among other things, documents related to any suspicious activities detected in Mr. Trump’s personal and business bank accounts since 2010, according to a copy of a subpoena included in a federal court filing.

Mr. Trump and his family sued Deutsche Bank in April, seeking to block it from complying with the congressional subpoenas. The president’s lawyers described the subpoenas as politically motivated.

hangtime79 on May 19th, 2019 at 16:29 UTC »

This is a really important story more so than just the Kushner-Trump connection. DB is a multi-time loser in the area of AML. There is not a worse, more lax bank on the Street.

DB purposefully helped countries like Iran, Syria, Libya and others evade sanction. If you or I had done what they did we would have been renditioned some place dark with no qualms about torture.

Ignored at least $10 billion in money laundering transactions with Russian mobsters and other unsavory characters

Was in the direct epicenter of the Libor scam

DB is mentioned multiple times in the Panama Papers

Was in the dead-center of the US mortgage lending crisis

Here is an article talking about just the Legal tab of the firm.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/deutsche-bank-investigations/

All other banks seem to get caught in these sorts of practices because they are not good at their job but then try to make things better. DB seems to actively work to find malfeasance.

AnotherPersonPerhaps on May 19th, 2019 at 16:08 UTC »

Wow.

Employees recommended filing SARs on Kushner and Trump because their transactions resembled money laundering.

Bank executives overruled them.

This looks like exactly what Congress needs from their subpoena.

Pretty huge story. No wonder Trump is fighting this so hard.

We need to know if this President was laundering money.

Edit: I've received a lot of responses along the lines of "of course we already know he did it!"

It's one thing to "know" it and quite another to prove it. I'd like to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

-FatNixon- on May 19th, 2019 at 16:07 UTC »

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government.

The nature of the transactions was not clear. At least some of them involved money flowing back and forth with overseas entities or individuals, which bank employees considered suspicious.

WOW! Trump is currently fighting the release of this information in court. Wonder why.

Edit: Holy shit!

Ms. McFadden, a longtime anti-money laundering specialist in Deutsche Bank’s Jacksonville office, said she had reviewed the transactions and found that money had moved from Kushner Companies to Russian individuals. She concluded that the transactions should be reported to the government — in part because federal regulators had ordered Deutsche Bank, which had been caught laundering billions of dollars for Russians, to toughen its scrutiny of potentially illegal transactions.