Deutsche Bank is once again paying dearly for its customer relationship with the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein: the bank has agreed to pay around 26 million dollars in a legal dispute with investors. Last Friday, the plaintiffs filed a preliminary settlement with a New York court, which still has to approve the settlement. The plaintiffs, who traded Deutsche Bank shares between 2018 and 2020, accuse the bank of having lax anti-money laundering controls. In addition, the bank presented advances in this area far too positively, which artificially drove up the share price.
The bank has claimed that risky customer relationships are consistently terminated. Instead, the plaintiffs allege, executives regularly overruled the concerns of employees in the compliance department and recommended risky customers for acceptance. When the bank was fined for its relationship with Epstein and other offenses, the stock price fell, hurting investors, it said in the complaint.
In addition to the group, the investors’ lawsuit was also directed against bank boss Christian Sewing and former CEO John Cryan. The money house denies any wrongdoing, but did not want to comment beyond that. In July 2020, the New York banking regulator imposed a $150 million fine on the bank for serious failings in the Epstein case and in the money laundering scandal with Danske Bank.
the Wardens had investigatedwhy the bank in the USA had been Jeffrey Epstein’s house bank for six years from 2013 onwards. The hedge fund manager was arrested on suspicion of sex trafficking in 2019, more than a decade after he pleaded guilty in a Florida court to the forced prostitution of a minor. His death in prison in August 2019 was ruled a suicide.