Prosecutors in Frankfurt have closed a criminal probe into alleged money laundering at Deutsche Bank but imposed a penalty of €15m on the bank.
German authorities raided Deutsche Bank’s offices, including its Frankfurt base, in connection with the probe in 2018. The move hit the bank’s stock value significantly.
The raid, involving 170 authorities, looked into alleged misconduct at Deutsche Bank’s British Virgin Islands unit Regula.
Regula was part of Deutsche Bank’s global trust solutions business, which was offloaded to Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son last year.
The probe concerned two of the bank’s employees, who were investigated over German client interactions with offshore entities set up by Regula.
The investigation into these employees has now been dropped due to lack of adequate suspicion.
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By GlobalDataHowever, the bank was penalised for lapses in its control environment and failures in promptly flagging the suspicious transactions.
Deutsche Bank spokesman Joerg Eigendorf stated: “With the closure of these proceedings it is clear that the prosecutors have not found any instances of criminal misconduct on the part of Deutsche Bank employees following the raid of our Frankfurt office in November 2018.
“The investigation that has now been closed due to lack of sufficient suspicion had a heavy impact on Deutsche Bank last year. It is true that the bank had weaknesses in its control environment in the past.
“We identified these weaknesses and we have addressed them in a disciplined manner.”