Reported by
German authorities have raided the offices of Germany’s top lender, Deutsche Bank, in connection with a money laundering probe, prosecutors said on Thursday.
The searches of the bank’s offices in Frankfurt and Berlin were conducted the day before and were ordered by the the Main Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Crime in Frankfurt am Main.
The operation is part of a “criminal investigation against unknown responsible parties and employees of Deutsche Bank AG on suspicion of money laundering and other related offenses under the Money Laundering Act,” prosecutor and spokesman Dominik Mies told OCCRP.
“In the past, Deutsche Bank AG maintained business relationships with foreign companies that, in the context of other investigations, are themselves suspected of having been used for the purpose of money laundering,” he said.
Deutsche Bank said in an e-mail that the probe is related to “transactions dating back to the period 2013–2018.” The investigation is “based on an allegedly late filing of a suspicious activity report. On this basis, the prosecutor is assessing whether there was any potential money laundering,” the bank said.
The statement did not disclose which individuals or foreign companies were involved in the transactions.
“We are of course fully cooperating with the public prosecutor's office,” the bank concluded in its statement.
According to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the money laundering probe involves Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. The publication reported that Deutsche Bank is alleged to have delayed submitting one or more suspicious activity reports to authorities regarding the oligarch’s companies.
The bank did not provide a comment when asked about this allegation.
Deutsche Bank has been the repeated subject of high-profile investigations. In 2021, U.S. prosecutors accused the bank of involvement in overseas bribery schemes and a conspiracy to manipulate and defraud precious metals markets. The case concluded with the lender agreeing to pay over $130 million to resolve the probe.
In 2022, Deutsche Bank settled a separate investigation by Frankfurt prosecutors regarding the processing of payments related to the family of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Furthermore, a previous investigation revealed that Deutsche Bank traders across three continents engaged in a scheme to defraud and manipulate commodities trading practices involving precious metals between 2008 and 2013.
