Catched up by Panama Papers, raids take place at Deutsche Bank

The German court ordered the search Thursday of local Deutsche Bank, whose headquarters in Frankfurt, in a money laundering investigation triggered by the revelations of the "Panama Papers". The first German bank, which has been struggling for years to rectify its revenues, has been suspected since August "of helping clients to set up companies in tax havens," Nadja Niesen, a media the floor of the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office.

While offshore structures are not in themselves illegal, they allow money laundering from criminal offenses to be laundered, forcing banks to "signal" suspicion to the authorities, parquet. But Deutsche Bank "did not report the suspicions of money laundering against offshore companies practicing tax fraud", before the revelation in April 2016 of the scandal "Panama Papers", thus missing its legal obligation, considers the same source.

The bank had "sufficient elements from the beginning of its relations"

According to the magistrates of Frankfurt, the bank had "sufficient elements from the beginning of its relations" with customers based in tax havens. In 2016 alone, recalls Nadja Niesen, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank based in the British Virgin Islands, has supported "more than 900 customers representing a business volume of 311 million euros."

To read : DSK's company cited in the Panama Papers case

As German law does not allow the prosecution of a money-laundering company, the investigations concern "two employees of Deutsche Bank aged 46 and 50, as well as a number of unidentified managers of the company", according to Ms. Niesen. Some 170 magistrates, police and tax officials began the search of five of the bank's premises in Frankfurt, Eschborn and Gross-Umstadt on Thursday, as well as a "private home" seizing "many written and electronic documents ".

The prosecution has not reported any arrest. "We feel we have already provided the authorities with all the relevant information regarding the Panama Papers. Of course, we will cooperate closely with the prosecution, "promised Deutsche Bank. After Societe Generale, which was raided in April 2016, Deutsche Bank is the second largest European bank caught up by millions of confidential documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, detailing more than 214,000 offshore companies and their shareholders.

"The Panama Papers have amply illustrated the cooperation"

The raid on Thursday "is a surprise, because this is the first time that the German authorities seem to act seriously against a bank" on these suspicions, comments AFP Markus Meinzer, director of the association Tax Justice Network. But "it was time," says Meinzer, "because the Panama Papers have amply illustrated the cooperation" between banks and law firms "to set up structures with one purpose: to help customers hide their identity."

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For Deutsche Bank, which has plummeted for ten years in the hierarchy of global banks, is subject to thousands of legal proceedings and suffers stock market, this survey adds to a long list of difficulties. "Every time we stumble on something, Deutsche Bank does," sums up a Frankfurt business lawyer on condition of anonymity. At the end of September, the German Constabulary of Markets had made the unprecedented decision to launch an audit to evaluate the progress of the group in the fight against financial crime (money laundering, financing of terrorism or organized crime).

In January 2017, the first German bank was fined nearly $ 630 million as part of a US and UK investigation into money laundering from Russia. Last week again, Deutsche Bank was splashed by investigations into Danish bank Danske Bank, whose German bank was the correspondent for eight years. On the stock market, the title of the Frankfurt establishment released 2.11% to 8.41 euros Thursday at 13:30 GMT, having already lost nearly half of its value since the beginning of the year.

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