Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs American & Russian, Part 2

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Martin J. Sheil is a retired branch chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation division.

See Part I here.

On March 10, 2017, US Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the ranking Democratic member on the House Committee on Financial Service, wrote a letter to US Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), the committee’s Republican chairman. In it, she requested that the committee conduct a formal assessment of the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into Deutsche Bank’s Russian money laundering schemes.

This assessment would include a review of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s role in continuing the investigation. It would also involve determining the nature of Russian money laundering, including who participated in the arrangement, and whether violations of US law — beyond failure to maintain anti-money-laundering (AML) controls — may have occurred.
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In 2008, many Russian companies and oligarchs suffered enormously from the effects of the worldwide financial recession, particularly those who were overleveraged. According to a 2008 New York Times article, companies belonging to two of Russia’s richest men were among the first recipients of a $50 billion bailout program channeled through the state development bank Vneshekonombank (VEB), intended to repay a syndicate of Western banks. VEB’s chairman at the time was Vladimir Putin.

The largest loan to come to light at the time was $4.5 billion to Rusal, an aluminum and mining company owned and run by billionaire Oleg V. Deripaska — reputedly Russia’s richest man at the time, and a long-time business associate of Paul Manafort. Manafort became campaign chairman of Trump’s presidential campaign, and was later indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. It is noted that some $30 million of Manafort transactions with Deutsche Bank are reportedly under scrutiny by Mueller’s team. - WhoWhatWhy.org