Daily Management Review

Bloomberg: Investigation of Deutsche Bank’s role in Danske Bank case stopped


01/23/2019


An investigation into the German Deutsche Bank in the case of large-scale money laundering through the Estonian branch of the largest Danish bank Danske Bank is not being conducted. It is a question of information requests from regulatory and law enforcement agencies, and the bank is cooperating with them, the press service of the bank said.



Tony Webster via flickr
Tony Webster via flickr
Earlier, Bloomberg reported that the US Federal Reserve is checking the German Deutsche Bank in the case of money laundering through the Estonian branch of Denmark's largest bank, Danske Bank.

An agency source at Danske Bank reported that most of the illegal cash flow from the Estonian branch of the bank went through a division of Deutsche Bank in the United States.

According to interlocutors of the newspaper, the Fed’s investigation against Deutsche Bank is at an early stage. Now the regulator is examining whether the US branch of the bank exercised proper control of funds from the Estonian branch of Danske. It clarifies that the Federal Reserve will check activities of the trust unit of the German bank.

"There is no investigation, there are numerous information requests from regulatory agencies and law enforcement agencies around the world. It is not surprising that law enforcement agencies and banks are themselves interested in the Danske case and the lessons that can be learned from it. Deutsche Bank cooperates with the departments and continues to inform them" – reads the press release.

In September 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Justice, the Ministry of Finance and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States are checking Danske Bank on suspicion of "laundering large sums of money from Russia and the former Soviet republics." At the same time, it was reported that the lawsuit filed with the SEC also mentioned Deutsche Bank and Citigroup, which allegedly participated in conducting transactions together with the Estonian branch of Danske Bank.

In November, it was reported that the US investigating authorities would verify Deutsche Bank, Bank of America and JPMorgan in a money-laundering case through the Estonian branch of Danske Bank.

Earlier, Danske Bank admitted that up to $ 234 billion were spent through its Estonian unit between 2007 and 2015. The Bank clarified that most of this money was received illegally by customers from Russia, the UK, and Ukraine, Azerbaijan and other CIS countries.

source: bloomberg.com, wsj.com