- Some of the ties to Russia include crimes like Russian money laundering through banks and the stock market; and money laundering is a crime. Trump was also $300 million in debt to one of those banks, Deutsche Bank. Trump’s attorney general will inherit an investigation of Deutsche Bank related to stock trades for rich clients in Russia, where Trump says he plans to improve relations, and may have to deal with a possible multibillion-dollar penalty to the bank related to mortgage-bond investigations.
Trump’s dealings with Wall Street stretch back decades to his attempt to build an Atlantic City casino empire. That badly timed push forced him to renegotiate with creditors when he couldn’t pay back billions of dollars in loans. His major backers in that era included Citbank, Chase Manhattan Bank and Bankers Trust, a bank that was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999, and the debacle left a trail of angry lenders. Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Trump actually predates its Bankers Trust purchase. In 1998, a small group of its real-estate bankers led by Mike Offit underwrote a $125-million loan for renovations on Trump’s building at 40 Wall Street. Trump showed up at Offit’s office, his reputation badly bruised. Deutsche Bank’s fledgling property business, in operation for only a year at the time, was the only group willing to take on Trump, Offit said in an interview. “I had one way to succeed, that was to make this thing big and profitable,” said Offit, who is now retired and has written a novel about Wall Street. “If I was super conservative and wasn’t willing to do some unusual stuff, how was I going to compete?”
In 2005, the bank approved a $640 million construction loan so Trump could build his name-sake tower in Chicago. The tower, with dozens of multimillion-dollar condos, broke ground at the height of the real-estate boom. As the project neared completion, the financial crisis hit, sending the global real-estate market crashing. And when part of the loan came due, rather than pay it, Trump sued a lending consortium led by Deutsche Bank for $3 billion. His suit argued that the financial crisis was equivalent to an earthquake, triggering a “force majeure” clause, which allows for a payback extension in extraordinary circumstances. Deutsche Bank countersued, claiming Trump owed a $40 million payment, which was a personal guarantee on the debt. The two later settled and, surprisingly, continued doing business together. Today, Trump owes about $300 million to the bank, nearly half of his outstanding debt, according to a July analysis by Bloomberg. That figure includes a $170-million loan Trump took out to finish his hotel in Washington. He also has two mortgages against his Trump National Doral Miami resort and a loan against his tower in Chicago. All four debts come due in 2023 and 2024. Garten said the Chicago loan no longer has Trump’s personal guarantee because the project has been completed.
Deutsche Bank is at the centre of an escalating row on Capitol Hill after the German bank refused to respond to a congressional request for information about the bank’s examination of Donald Trump’s bank account and whether he had financial ties to Russia. Maxine Waters, a top Democrat on the House financial services committee, has challenged Deutsche Bank’s legal rationale for refusing to volunteer information about the US president’s account and an internal review the bank conducted last year. The Guardian reported in February that Deutsche Bank – whose clients include Trump’s daughter Ivanka; her husband, Jared Kushner; and Kushner’s mother –conducted a close internal examination last year of the Trump’s personal account and the accounts of his family to gauge whether there were any suspicious connections to Russia.
Deutsche Bank claimed in a response to the first congressional request that US laws prohibit it from sharing information about its customers to government agencies. But Waters and four other Democrats said in a letter that was sent to Deutsche’s Washington attorneys this week that the German bank had misinterpreted the law and said privacy rules do not apply to requests made by Congress. The Democrats’ letter cited a 2012 legal article written by one of Deutsche’s own lawyers that said privacy statutes do not clearly address how banks should handle congressional inquiries. The Democrats are pushing for Deutsche Bank to confirm press reports – including the report in the Guardian – that the bank conducted a review of Trump’s account and the accounts of his family members into possible Russia ties.
The Guardian reported that the bank was looking for evidence of whether loans to Trump, which were agreed in highly unusual circumstances, may have been underpinned by financial guarantees from Moscow. Sources inside Deutsche told the Guardian that no link was found. The Democrats are also looking for information about a separate internal review of a trading scheme at Deutsche’s former Moscow branch – known as a mirror trading scheme – that allegedly allowed $10 billion to flow out of Russia. It is still unclear who benefited from the scheme but Deutsche reportedly reviewed the matter internally.
Deutsche Bank appointed Richard Weber as Managing Director and Head of Anti-Financial Crime (AFC) for the Americas and Irwin Nack as Managing Director and Deputy Head of Anti-Financial Crime for the Americas. Weber started on June 26 and will report to Philippe Vollot, Global Head of Anti-Financial Crime & Group Anti-Money Laundering Officer, and to Stuart Clarke, COO for the Americas. Weber will also join the Global AFC Executive Committee. Nack started at the bank in May and will report to Weber. “I am honored and delighted that Richard and Irwin have accepted such critical and important positions at the bank,” said Vollot. “Their additions represent a material enhancement to our AFC program and demonstrate the bank’s commitment to fighting financial crime. Their arrival will reinforce the overall talent pool within the Chief Regulatory Office division and enhance the control environment.”
Deutsche Bank added 170 employees in the Anti-Financial Crime division in 2016 and expects to hire more than 600 additional staff in 2017. Weber joins Deutsche Bank from the Internal Revenue Service, a bureau of the US Department of the Treasury, where he served as Chief of the Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI) for the past five years. Before IRS-CI, Weber was the Deputy Chief of the Investigation Division and Chief of the Major Economic Crimes Bureau in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. He previously served as Chief of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section at the US Department of Justice and as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. Weber has more than 25 years of experience and is regarded as an expert on financial crime matters. He is the recipient of the 2015 Presidential Rank Award, the highest civil service recognition that is awarded in the federal government. He is also a two-time recipient of the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award, the highest honor for Justice Department lawyers.
Nack joins Deutsche Bank from the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ where he most recently was Head of Global Financial Crimes Advisory. He was previously the bank’s Chief Compliance Officer for the Americas, a role he assumed after serving as Head of Bank Secrecy Act / Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) for the Americas. Nack has more than 20 years of anti-financial crime experience and is an expert in AML. Earlier in his career, he served as Investigative Counsel for the New York State Banking Department, the predecessor agency to the New York State Department of Financial Services and was as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. He spent five years in the Manhattan DA’s Office as a trial attorney prosecuting all levels of misdemeanor and felony criminal offences and subsequently transferred to the Investigations Division where he investigated and prosecuted complex financial crime cases.
Now why do you think Deutsche Bank is adding so much fire power to their Anti-Financial Crime & Group Anti-Money Laundering divisions and beefing up it’s staff by going from 170 employees to more than 600 additional staff after an internal review examination of Donald Trump’s bank accounts as to whether he had financial ties to Russia? And why do you think Deutsche Bank is fighting the congressional request for information about the bank’s internal review examination of Trump’s bank accounts so hard? Could it be that even though sources inside Deutsche Bank told the Guardian that no link was found that there actually was a link found?
On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow reports that Deutsche Bank, at the center of a lot of questions about its business practices and loans made to both Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, has hired a new lawyer with a background in tax crimes and money laundering.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about progress in the Trump Russia investigation and the path forward, including processing 2000 pages of financial evidence with more on the way.
And there are other problems with Trump’s financial dealings. Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians as reported in the New Republic: Trump’s Russian Laundromat: How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.
On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams A stunning report in The New Republic alleges that, whether Donald Trump knew it or not, for decades he made a large portion of his personal fortune from Russian mobsters & oligarchs.
July 19th 2017 as reported in the New York Times: During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump pointed to his relationship with Deutsche Bank to counter reports that big banks were skeptical of doing business with him. After a string of bankruptcies in his casino and hotel businesses in the 1990s, Trump became somewhat of an outsider on Wall Street, leaving the giant German bank among the few major financial institutions willing to lend him money. Now that two-decades-long relationship is coming under scrutiny. Banking regulators are reviewing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made to Trump’s businesses through Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management unit, which caters to an ultrarich clientele, according to three people briefed on the review who were not authorized to speak publicly. The regulators want to know if the loans might expose the bank to heightened risks.
Separately, Deutsche Bank has been in contact with federal investigators about the Trump accounts, according to two people briefed on the matter. And the bank is expecting to eventually have to provide information to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. It was not clear what information the bank might ultimately provide. Generally, the bank is seen as central to understanding Trump’s finances since it is the only major financial institution that continues to conduct sizable business with him. Deutsche Bank has also lent money to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and to his family real estate business.
Although Deutsche Bank recently landed in legal trouble for laundering money for Russian entities — paying more than $600 million in penalties to New York and British regulators — there is no indication of a Russian connection to Trump’s loans or accounts at Deutsche Bank, people briefed on the matter said. The bank, which declined to comment, scrutinizes its accounts for problematic ties as part of so-called “know your customer” banking rules and other requirements.
On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams In his stunning interview with The New York Times, Trump said if Special Counsel investigates too deep into his finances that would be a ‘red line.’ Charlie Sykes & Eugene Robinson react.
