********QUOTE*********
.... In his new book, Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction, (David) Enrich traces the full arc of the relationship, offering plenty of juicy details—including the amazing story of a bank executive’s suicide and how it led his son to dig into confidential files, which he has shared with government investigators. ....
David Enrich: .... Deutsche Bank, as one executive there told me, needs damaged clients. And the reason it does is because if you’re an established wealthy business man or business woman, you often have your pick of which banks you are going to go to. And Deutsche Bank would not top the list. So Deutsche had to be content with clients that were off-limits to other banks. ....
DE: ... At the end of the Obama administration in late 2016, there were a number of investigations into the bank’s laundering of money for wealthy Russians. And that included a Justice Department criminal investigation. And I had been hearing that the DOJ was pretty close to bringing some sort of charges against the bank and possibly individuals at the bank. And I believe those were likely to be criminal charges, but I’m not 100% certain.
And it sounded like they were very close to wrapping up an investigation and punishing the bank. And then Trump gets sworn into office and the investigation goes silent. And initially people at Deutsche Bank, who had braced themselves for the punishment and for it to be quite large and quite damaging publicly. And at first they figured that this is just the product of one administration transitioning to another. And that it’s a matter of time—and the weeks pass and the months pass and a year passed and still nothing. Just complete radio silence. And at this point, a lot of people within the bank have breathed a sigh of relief that this has essentially gone away in the Trump administration. And I think the view from some people I’ve spoken to is that it is not a coincidence, that there is a belief in some quarters, I know there’s a belief in some parts of the bank, that Trump viewed Deutsche Bank and Russia as completely off limits. ....
FastCompany: I wanted to ask you about Val Broeksmit, the son of the Deutsche executive who hanged himself in 2014, and who has since accessed his father’s computer files. When Val met with two FBI agents last year, they told him they had started investigating Deutsche money laundering in Russia but had widened their scope. Is there any indication that included Kushner moving money to Russian individuals or any Trump deals?
DE: All I know is what the FBI has told people about their investigation. And one of those people is Val. And I’ve got a very complete recounting of everything the FBI told Val in those meetings. But I’ve also talked to at least two other people who had been interviewed by the FBI about things related to Deutsche Bank. And in both of those cases, the FBI agents have been looking at or been asking questions about aspects of the Trump relationship—in one case, asking about suspicious activity reports that were filed related to Trump and Kushner. And in the other case, they were asking about some transactions that Trump had been involved with, and all of them [were] people outside of the United States. ....
*********UNQUOTE*********
= new reply since forum marked as read
