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The German court ordered the search Thursday of six 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 recover its revenues, is suspected of "helping clients to set up companies in tax havens," the Frankfurt public prosecutor said in a statement. If the offshore structures are not in themselves illegal, they allow to "launder money from criminal offenses", which forces the banks to "report" to the authorities any suspicion on this subject, specifies the same source.
But Deutsche Bank "did not report suspicions of money laundering against offshore companies practicing tax fraud", before the revelation in April 2016 of the scandal of the "Panama Papers", thus breaching its legal obligation, says the prosecution . 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, says the prosecutor's office, a branch of Deutsche Bank based in the British Virgin Islands has supported "more than 900 customers representing a business volume of 311 million euros".
Employees and responsible persons
Formally, German law does not provide for a prosecution against a company, the investigations target "two employees of Deutsche Bank aged 46 and 50, and a number of unidentified officials of the company," according to the parquet. Some 170 magistrates, police and tax officials began the search of six local banks in Frankfurt, Eschborn and Gross-Umstadt on Thursday, seizing "numerous written and electronic documents". The prosecution has not reported any arrest.
"It is true that the police are currently investigating several sites of our bank, (…) in connection with the Panama Papers," confirmed Deutsche Bank, promising to "cooperate fully". Deutsche Bank is the second largest European bank caught up in this scandal, which broke out in 2016 with the leak of millions of confidential documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, detailing more than 214,000 offshore companies and their shareholders. In April 2016, already, the headquarters of the French bank Societe Generale had been searched as part of an extensive investigation opened in France for "laundering aggravated tax fraud" and targeting 500 suspects.
Long list of difficulties
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 it," says a Frankfurt business lawyer.
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). "We agree with Bafin that we can improve," admitted Deutsche Bank.
In January 2017, the first German bank was fined nearly $ 630 million as part of an investigation by the US and UK authorities for 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.
LQ / AFP
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