After the raid on global financial powerhouse Deutsche Bank at the end of November, analysts are taking a second look at the strenuous and vocal denials by the bank and by Kushner Companies that there were any “suspicious transactions” flagged back in January of 2018.
In a two-day raid, the headquarters of Germany’s largest bank were tossed by authorities as part of an ongoing probe into money laundering, the creation of fraudulent offshore accounts, and failure to disclose such suspicious transactions.
German business trade publication Manager Magazin issued a report in January that detailed an internal investigation during which Deutsche Bank’s board chairman Paul Achleitner found “troubling” results. Translated text of the report tells the story:
Deutsche Bank has evidence that the real estate investor Jared Kushner or related companies or persons In the course of their transactions suspicious money could have been channeled through Deutsche Bank…”
Both Kushner and the bank immediately denied any such transactions had been found or reported to BaFin, the regulatory agency for German banking.
But that denial ended up covering only the fact that they had not made a written, official statement to BaFin, and it turned out that the transactions had been conveyed orally through “intermediaries” who relayed the report.
Now, after nearly a year of further investigation, authorities had clearly compiled enough evidence of money laundering to warrant the raid that was carried out over the weekend at the end of November, and any denials that the bank or those associated with the bank have issued in the interim are, of course, subject to further scrutiny.
Although the current raids are related only to the infamous “Panama Papers,” an infamous cache of documents that were leaked in 2016 that exposed a global money laundering scheme involving corruption, tax evasion, and international political crises, the fact remains that Deutsche Bank is one of the few lenders left in the world that will extend credit to Donald Trump, and past investigations have returned enough ties between Trump, his son-in-law, and the bank that Robert Mueller’s special counsel team saw fit to request reports regarding Trump finances as early as 2017.
Of particular interest is the fact that Deutsche Bank allegedly helped Russian oligarchs move billions of dollars that were subject to international sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act. Those sanctions were the driving force behind Russia’s attempt to trade information for policy concessions from the Trump campaign when Putin sent Kremlin lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to meet with Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort, and others on the campaign in Trump Tower in 2016 under the guise of concern over American adoptions of Russian children.
If Trump brings on a more permanent Chief of Staff than his recent pick Mick Mulvaney and it turns out to be Kushner, as has been widely reported was his intention, perhaps the two of them should work out a retainer for a full-time lawyer for their joint activities.
Featured image via screen capture
