The public prosecutor’s office has again searched the premises of the Deutsche Bank subsidiary DWS. The raid once again involved allegations that the fund provider had provided false information about “green” investments.
Together with officials from the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor’s office searched the premises of the investment company DWS in Frankfurt again on January 16th. The public prosecutor confirmed this tagesschau.de
According to the authorities, a search warrant from the Frankfurt district court dated December 7th last year was executed. “The background to the measure are allegations of suspicion of so-called greenwashing by DWS. The search served to further clarify these allegations,” says a statement from the public prosecutor’s office. “The investigation is directed against the former person responsible and previously unknown DWS employees.” The investigation was ongoing.
DWS wants to “fully cooperate”
Yesterday the “Handelsblatt” had already reported on the campaign. According to the newspaper, DWS stated that the company had “provided further information on site at the request of the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office.”
DWS had already received a visit from investigators at the end of May 2022. At that time, employees from the public prosecutor’s office, the financial regulator BaFin and the Federal Criminal Police Office searched not only the company headquarters, but also the rooms of the parent company Deutsche Bank. The former DWS boss Asoka Wöhrmann had to leave the company shortly afterwards.
“Greenwashing” is about the accusation of fraudulent labeling when it comes to information about environmental protection and the sustainability of investments. According to DWS, the fund company examined and made available a total of around three million documents, both upon request and proactively. “We will continue to cooperate fully in order to complete the investigation as quickly as possible,” DWS told Handelsblatt.
Sustainability officer got the ball rolling
The trigger for the first raid on DWS in 2022 were allegations from the previous year. After an examination, the public prosecutor’s office announced that there was “sufficient factual evidence that, contrary to the information in the sales prospectuses of DWS funds, ESG factors were actually only taken into account in a minority of the investments.” The abbreviation ESG stands for “Environment, Social, Governance”.
However, these factors “did not receive any attention” in a large number of investments. This raises the accusation of prospectus fraud. Statements from the former DWS sustainability officer, Desiree Fixler, preceded the investigations. The DWS had previously always rejected the allegations.
While the investigations against DWS are still ongoing in Germany, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took a big step further last year: it sentenced the Deutsche Bank fund subsidiary to a fine of millions. The Frankfurters have to pay $25 million – because of inadequate money laundering controls and false information about “green” investments.