Deutsche Bank Shares Tumble After Offices Raided In Money-Laundering Probe
Deutsche Bank shares are down over 3% in early trading following reports that German police raided their offices in Frankfurt and in Berlin on Wednesday morning, as part of an investigation into money laundering.
“We confirm that the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office is on site in our offices,” a Deutsche Bank spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“The bank is cooperating fully with the public prosecutor’s office. We cannot comment further.”
As Bloomberg reports, the raid is a setback for Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing who is widely credited with turning around the lender and drawing a line under a long period of scandals and losses after taking over almost eight years ago.
The bank has repeatedly been raided in the past.
In 2022, German law enforcement searched Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt offices as part of an earlier money laundering probe.
In May that year, the German bank and its DWS subsidiary were investigated regarding allegations of greenwashing at the latter.
In 2018, Deutsche Bank was inspected by 170 law enforcement officials as part of a tax evasion probe into two employees.
The investigation — which stemmed from the 2016 so-called “Panama papers” leak — was later dropped, with the lender fined over compliance shortcomings.
Deutsche Bank “has maintained business relationships in the past with foreign companies which, in turn, are suspected of having been used for money laundering purposes as part of further investigations,” the prosecutor’s office said in the statement.
It’s conducting a raid at Deutsche Bank premises in Frankfurt and Berlin to investigate the matter, it said.
The investigation comes a day before the German lender is due to publish its fourth quarter and year-end earnings report.